Who doesn’t love the iPod silhouette ads? If you don’t like them then you won’t like this tutorial either because I’m going to teach you how to make your own. And better yet, we’re going to do it in PSE for those of us who haven’t yet taken the dive into full blown PS.

1. Choose a photo with a background that’s easy to remove and make it easy on yourself – make sure their hand is visible or you could slip the iPod into their pocket when it comes time for that step.

2. Use the quick selection tool to isolate the subject from the background.



3. cmd+j to make that selection into a new layer


4. Select layer –> new fill layer –> solid color. When the color pallette opens after you click ok, you have to choose the background. The actual iPod colours are: Blue #1379F9, Purple #9369BF, Orange #F59110, Green #9FCC39, Pink #EB5297. Just copy/paste that into the colour selection palette when making the fill layer.

This is your image with the new fill layer:

5. In the layers palette, drag the new fill layer under the subject and make a new fill layer which is black. Put that one above the subject so you have a sandwich. With the black layer over the cut-out subject, type cmd+g and it will clip the fill layer into your subject and there you have your silhouette. At this point, you could select the black layer and the subject and then merge them into one layer.

6. Now go to Google images and find a photo of a white iPod. Right click –> copy it.

7. Go back to your photo and cmd+v to paste it on. It will be it’s own layer.

8. Use the magic eraser tool (right click the eraser to reveal it) and simply click away the white around the iPod

9. Use the rounded rectangle tool to draw a new screen. Radius 5 px. For the colour, use the dropper tool to use the colour from the iPod’s spin wheel. Now you can go to the layers palette and merge those two layers to make one iPod graphic and drag it up to the hand.

10. Rotate the iPod to fit the hand. Depending on their perspective, you might need to use the image –> transform tools to skew, rotate or distort it to match the angle of the subject.

11. Erase away parts of the iPod where you want it to appear that the hand is wrapped around it and then use the rounded rectangle shape tool radius 0.5 px to draw a little plug on the top.

12. This is where it gets tricky and I haven’t found any solutions. In full PS versions, there is a pen tool where you can draw nice smooth fluid lines which you can’t do in PSE because we’ve only got the pencil and paintbrush tools in PSE. I used a 5px white round paint line to draw the earphone cord. It’s really rough – you’ll just have to try your best to make it smooth. Personally, I find that the faster I do it, the smoother it is. The only way I’ve found to them smooth it out just a dab is to apply a slight gaussian blur to the drawing. Filters –> blur –> gaussian blur. Just a pixel or two.

13. Add some text. MyriadPro is the closest font to that which is on the iPod ads. Use the shape drawing tool to draw a little apple. You could maybe find the actual logo somewhere, but I don’t know if that’s legal so I’d suggest just make your own.

14. Use a little round eraser brush to take a bite out of your apple.

And that’s it. Sit back and enjoy your very own iPod ad!

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