Creating a Compact DiscWelcome to the Creating a Compact Disc tutorial. If you need help with it, or find it confusing, don'thesitate to e-mail me, the information is at the bottom of the page.

1 Create a new document ( Ctrl + N ). Open

the Elliptical Marquee Tool ( ), holddown the Shift key on your keyboard (tocreate a perfect circle) and drag a circleselection in the middle of your working area.At this point you may fill the circle with thecolor you want, this will change thetint/color your CD obtains. Create a smallercircle inside using the same method, use theimage to the left to size it up, once selectedhit the Delete key on your keyboard.

Use the following RGB settings to use thecolor I used; 25, 140, 206.

2 Drag the current layer to the Create NewLayer button at the bottom middle of theLayers palette to create a copy of it. Add alighting effects filter,Filter>Render>Lighting Effects and use ahigh Gloss setting along with a low Materialsetting. This part is really up to you as youdecide how much of a glare you want yourCD to have. Once the Lighting Effects havebeen applied set the layer's blending mode toLuminosity.

Your result should look somewhere near tothe image to the left.

Creating A CD in Photoshop 5/5.5

3 Recordable CDs will normally have an easilyidentifiable edge, or ring, I don't know why itit is there, but since I was using a recordableCD for reference, I'm not about to leave itout. Create a circle in the middle and removethe middle using the selection methods youused above.

Once you've finished set the layer's opacityto 30% and set the blending mode toOverlay.

Your result should look similar to the imageto the left.

4 Choose the Gradient Tool from the toolbar.In it's options palette set the gradient mode toTransparent Rainbow.

Place the cursor at the top in the center of thedocument and drag downwards past the otheredge, release the mouse and and rainbowgradient will appear.

Click Ctrl + A on your keyboard to selectall.

Creating A CD in Photoshop 5/5.5

5 Choose Edit>Transform>Skew from themain menu. Grab the top and bottom-lefthandles of the bounding box and drag themto the center. You may need to drag theupper right handle upwards more and thelower right one downwards to spread thegradient across the CD a bit more.

Use the image to the left for reference.

Press Enter when you're satisfied or clickEsc to cancel and restart.

6 Set the layer's blending mode to Overlay andadd a Guassian Blur, Filter>Blur>GuassianBlur, input a setting of 10 and press OK.

Creating A CD in Photoshop 5/5.5

7 Add this effect to the top, bottom and leftside of the CD, and you'll get something likethis.

One way of doing this is as follows;

Drag the first gradient's layer onto theCreate New Layer button in the Layerpalette, and rotate the other gradients to fitnicely using the Free Transform options(Ctrl + T)

8 Hold down your Ctrl key and click on theCreate New Layer button in the Layerspalette. This will add an adjustment layer,choose Hue/Saturation as the Type andmake sure you check Group With PreviousLayer.

Click OK and the Hue/Saturation dialog boxwill appear, input these settings, orexperiment with your own;

Hue: 0Saturation: 25Lightness: -27Colorize: Yes

You can download my settings here if youare familiar with loading settings.

Creating A CD in Photoshop 5/5.5

9 Repeat step 8 for the upper gradient exceptuse the following settings, or download minehere.

Now Ctrl + Click on the New Layer buttonagain, but this time choose Levels as thetype. (This layer should be created above thesecond Hue/Saturation layer) Use thefollowing Levels settings, or download minehere;

Channel: RGBInput Levels: 131 , 0.83 , 245Output Levels: 45 , 27

Note: Step 8 and 9 are very loose, you cancustomize the CD as you want, these are justthe settings I used.

10 Ctrl + Click on the original CD template'slayer (the first layer we created) to access it'stransparency mask. (selection)

Choose Select>Modify>Expand, use andinput of 4 pixels, create a new layer above allthe others and fill the selection with black.

Your result should look similar to the imageto the left.

Creating A CD in Photoshop 5/5.5

11 There are of course little subtleties that needto be added to this to make it look like a realCD, but the main effect has been achieved.Keep in mind that if you change the the thecolor of the first layer, the color of the CDwill change with it, although you may haveto change the adjustment layers' settings abit.

Voila we have a CD!

DiscussionI hope you enjoyed the tutorial, I hope you understood it all being as it was very long. If you have anyquestions, or there are any steps that I can further elaborate on, don't hesitate to e-mail me using theinformation below. Due to the amount of e-mail I get, you'll get a quicker response if you use thediscussion forum. Post your question in the tutorials forum. Click here to go to the discussion forum.

ExamplesIf you size them down, the CDs make for great icons as well!

Dan Caylorhttp:/www.thinkdan.comE-mail: dan@thinkdan.comCopyright © 2000, 2001 Dan Caylor

Creating A CD in Photoshop 5/5.5

Creating A CD in Photoshop 5/5.5

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