Using Pencil Pixels Free Glitter Styles

Pencil Pixels' Glitter Styles are a great way of adding bits of glitter to images.

Not just for the holidays, the styles can be applied to Fonts and Shapes as well.

Best Part, they are Free and this tutorial will provide you with tips for using them in a number of ways.

First things first, they can be downloaded from the Pencil Pixels site.

Like any style files, they can be loaded into Photoshop (when open) by double clicking on the .atn file, or you can load them from the styles pallet 'Load Styles ...' selection.

There are ten styles of glitter.

Like all styles, you can alter the color, the shadow intensity and the opacity to suit your specific needs.

First open an image.
Add a new layer (Styles can't be applied to the Background layer).
Select a Glitter Style to use.

Using the Paint Brush, simply draw on this layer and ... instant glitter and tinsel!

The brush you select can dramatically change the glitter style appearance.

The examples that follow use some of the standard Photoshop brushes. A brush with 100% hardness (13) is very useful for accenting smaller areas of your image.
Using a softer edge brush, like (45) will soften the edges of the effect. This is beneficial when you want to retain a dithered outline.
The numbers in the brushes' pallet represent the size of the brush. I refer to the numbers here as a 'name' to call the brush I'm referring to.

The effect of the Glitter style is pronounced when you use a brush that has dynamic properties associated with it.

You can set the dynamics yourself or use some of the preset Photoshop brushes.

(29) and (112) are brushes that are preset with dynamics that varies as the stroke progresses. The variance can be in opacity, rotation, color, size and softness.

As you see in the example, the bottom two brushes create a complex 'paint pattern' with very little effort on the part of the user.

Since the glitter styles are ... styles, they can be applied to text, to shapes, to frames or on corner deceratives. I like the look when it is applied to a thin line and used to separate content on a page.

The effect doesn't have to be overt. In the example above, I used 3 different styles to play with the image. Spot them?

With a little imagination you can start to see the possibilities. Below, I painted on different layers with different styles and brush shapes. I then reduced the opacity of the image to almost 0%, leaving the form of the tree made up of glitter. Next year I may even put a Saturation Adjustment layer on top and let the image explode with color.

In this example, I used multiple styles and brush shapes on layers that were on top of each other.  Hay, it's your imagination - I'm just giving you he tools.

Get the Free Glitter Styles at Pencil Pixels and enjoy the holidays. While your there, we have a large number of other Free scripts, fonts and styles to take an image from the ordinary to the extraordinary.