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How to: Create a Valentine’s card with Photoshop

Elena Santos

Elena Santos

  • Updated:

Despite James’s apparent dislike towards Valentine’s Day, there are still plenty of people who like celebrating this day and exchanging presents with their beloved ones. But no matter how much you love your better half, finding the perfect Valentine’s gift can be quite expensive. For those of you with very tight budgets, here’s a cheap way to obtain a truly original present: create your very own Valentine’s card with Photoshop.

Create a Valentine's card with Photoshop

1. Open a blank document in Photoshop and fill it with a nice dark blue color. Make it as big as you want your card to be.

Create a Valentine's card with Photoshop

2. Grab the Custom Shape Tool (U) and select the heart shape. Draw a big nice heart in a somewhat dark shade of red.

Create a Valentine's card with Photoshop

3. Now apply a Drop Shadow effect in white and an Inner Shadow in a lighter red, following the values you can see in these screenshots:

Create a Valentine's card with Photoshop

Create a Valentine's card with Photoshop

4. You should get something like this. Press Ctrl+T and rotate the heart a bit. When you’re done press Enter to apply the rotation.

Create a Valentine's card with Photoshop

5. Now click on the heart and rasterize it. Select the layer by Ctrl+clicking on it and go to Edit > Define Brush Preset to create a new brush based on your heart.

Create a Valentine's card with Photoshop

6. Create a new layer and before using your now heart brush, make sure you open the Brush Options window (F5), click on Shape Dynamics and set Angle Jitter to 50%. Now you can start painting some more hearts on the new layer. When you’re happy with the result turn this layer’s opacity down to 20%.

Create a Valentine's card with Photoshop

7. Duplicate the heart layer and make it a bit smaller, then apply a slight rotation too.

Create a Valentine's card with Photoshop

8. Create a text layer and write your message with a nice font. Then duplicate this text layer, make it as big as the card itself and set its opacity to 20%.

Create a Valentine's card with Photoshop

9. Finally, go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation and add some red saturation to the two heart layers in order to make them brighter. Your card is done!

Create a Valentine's card with Photoshop

Elena Santos

Elena Santos

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