Burned Eggs (Photoshop Elements)

OK, I’ll admit it. I’m not the best cook.

I’m ashamed to say that I burn boiling eggs on a regular basis! I put them on to boil and then forget about them. Ugh! A timer doesn’t even help. I should mention that I also have a problem with selective hearing!

Lucky for me, burning things in Photoshop Elements is actually a good thing! Adobe’s version of burning refers to the darkening of pixels. It will give an element, a piece of paper, or a photo more definition and dimension. I’m sure you have lots of things in your digital arsenal to burn, and it won’t even make your kitchen stink!

In this tutorial we are going to take part in the classic Easter-time tradition of decorating eggs (and then burning them) the digital way.

Step 1: Prepare

Open a new document (File > New > Blank File) that is 4 x 4 inches at 300 px/in with a transparent background. Click OK.

Step 2: Create

In this step we are going to create our egg shape.

• Get the Custom Shape tool. It’s nested with the Rectangle tool.
• Click the drop down arrow in the Options Bar to pick a shape. Choose Circle.
• Click the drop down arrow to get the Custom Shape Options. Choose Fixed Sized and enter W: 2 in, H: 3 in.
• Click on your document to place your new shape.
• Simplify the shape layer. To do that, Right Click (Mac: Ctrl Click) on the shape layer and choose Simplify Layer.

Step 3: Decorate

For this step you will need to find a piece of digital paper to decorate your egg.

Open a piece of digital paper by pressing File > Open.

Get the Move tool and drag the paper onto your document. The paper should land as the top layer, covering up the egg layer.

Clip (or group) the paper to your egg shape by holding down the Alt key (Mac: Opt key) and clicking between your two layers. (See the image below.)

Now you may want to change the size and/or position of the paper to get the look you want. When you do this, make sure the paper layer is active.

Tip: Your paper should be much bigger than your document, so you might not be able to see the bounding box of the paper. Press the letter V to get the Move tool. Make sure ‘Show Bounding Box’ is checked in the Options Bar. Then press Ctrl Zero (Mac: Cmd Zero) to make the layer fit on your screen. Now you can use the bounding box to resize the paper. Click on the green check mark to accept the change.

Step 4: Burn

A little burning (or darkening) goes a long way to create a more natural look.

• Get the Burn tool. It’s nested with the Sponge tool.
• In the Options Bar, choose a soft round brush. I chose Soft Mechanical 300 pixels.
• With the paper layer active, drag your brush along the outside edges of the egg shape. Keep in mind that a little goes a long way with the Burn tool. Too much burn will be…well, too much.

Step 5: Save

I planned on making several decorated eggs for my scrapbook page, so I saved my document as a .psd file to preserve the layer information. If you don’t plan on reusing your egg shape, you can just save it as a .png file. A .png file will not preserve the layers, but it will preserve the transparent background.

• Save your document (File > Save As).
• With the top layer active, press Shift Ctrl Alt E to create a merged layer.
• Drag your merged layer onto your scrapbook page.

I would love to see your scrapbook pages using this tip! Scrapper’s Guide has a gallery set up just for Tip of the Week creations, so get scrapping and show me what you’ve got!

Credits: Scrapbook page by Jen White. Kit used was Lucky Ducky by Miss Mint. This kit is available at Scrapper’s Guide.

Download a PDF version of this “Burned Eggs” tutorial.

Windows: Right click on the link and choose “Save Target As” or a similar command.
Mac: Click on the link to download the file.

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