Dotted Lines

I own the intellectual copyright for the written tutorial.  What you make is yours, but please do not take my tutorial.  Share only my link.

This tutorial is intended for a beginner to learn how to make dotted lines.  If you have any questions, please feel free to email me.

To do this tutorial you will also need Photoshop CS - CS3.  You may download a free trial at Adobe.

Remember to save as a .psd file often!

1.  Open New, transparent image, size 300 x 200.

2.  Edit > Fill > WHITE

3.  Layer > New > Layer

4.  Choose a color for your foreground.  I chose blue.  Set your background color to black.

5.  Filter > Render > Clouds

6.  Choose the brush tool

7.  Window > Brushes  to see the brush palette.  Click on the WORDS  Brush Tip Shape.

Choose a size 13 round brush (or size of your choice).

8.  Click the menu arrow (black triangle in right corner of the brush palette) and choose New Brush Preset.  We don't want to mess up the brush that you already have.

9.  Give it a name.  I called it Dots 13 (for size 13)

10.  Set the Diameter = 13 px, set the spacing  = 150%.  Notice the preview window.  There are now dots.

Now you have a DOTTED brush tip that you can use on any project!  The next steps will show you how to use it.

11.  Layer > New > Layer

12.  Set the foreground color to WHITE.

13.  Left click once in the left corner.  Hold the SHIFT key down, and left-click once in the right corner.  The two dots will be connected with a dotted line.

14.  I continued around each side of the rectangle.  Left-click once in the top right corner (on top of the dot already there), hold SHIFT key down and left-click in the bottom right corner.  And continue like that.

15.  Choose the Rectangular Marquee Tool

16.  Hold the CTRL key down and left-click with the marquee tool on top of the THUMBNAIL in the top layer of the Layer Palette  (see where the pink arrow is pointing). 

17.  This will select all the white dots for you.

18.  In the Layer Palette, click on the middle layer (your clouded layer)

19.  Press the DELETE key.  This will make circle "holes" in that layer.  But you can't see them yet because of the white dots.

20.  Right-click on the TOP layer (white dots) and choose Delete Layer.  Now you should see the holes in the clouded layer.

21.  Right-click on the clouded layer (which is now the top layer) and choose Blending Options.  Click on the WORDS Drop Shadow.  Apply these settings:  Normal, black, Opacity = 49%, angle = 120, distance = 5, spread = 0, size = 5.

22.  Now Layers > Merge All

23.  Place your text on it, or decorate it

24.  Save this as a JPEG.  File > Save As.

Experiment!  See what other projects you can use your dotted lines on.

 Please do not remove this tutorial from my site.  Share my url.