How to Create Personal Overlays for Your Images
I have been thinking about this subject ever since I bought some beautiful overlays from the French Kiss website. Their overlays are based on genuine old French letters and postmarks, but it seemed to me that it should be a fairly easy to create your own customized overlays. So this blog is about making your own overlays. The image above is of the pretty light purple Phlox Phloxy Lady flowers I had growing in my front yard and by adding texture and overlays to it, a soft romantic feel is created. This image used a quote from Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “The Flowers” and was a fairly easy example on how to start creating your own overlays. The steps below will guide you through this process.
The Basic Steps to Create a Text or Object Overlay (png) File for your Images.
1. Create a New Document – I used an 8 X 10 inch document at 300 ppi.
2. If creating text, select the Text Tool, which creates a Text Layer on top of your Background Layer. In the Options Bar set your text color to Black for now (3rd icon over from right) and select an appropriate font. In the case above, the Old Script Font was chosen because the letters actually look like writing.
3. Type in your text. I like to use poetry quotes but use your own work for a real personal feel. Several different Text layers can be created using the same or different fonts. Add Clip Art layers or use a New Layer to paint in your own ideas – I find sticking to black a good idea and then adding color in later.
4. Once finished entering text and/or objects, turn off your background layer click on the eyeball on the left edge of the Layer in the Layers Palette. The image above just had one text layer, so it was duplicated and rasterized (right click on text layer and select rasterize so it is no longer a text layer). If more than one text or object layer is in the file, create a composite layer at top by highlighting the top layer and pressing CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+E so all the text or object layers are combined into one layer.
5. Now turn off all the eyeballs to the left of the layers except for the new top composite layer.
6. Here is the trick to getting this psd layer into a png file format to use as an overlay in your documents. Go to File -> Scripts -> Export Layers to Files. You need to set up a location for your new png file, name your file, and set the File Type to PNG-24. This takes a minute for Photoshop to process, but it eventually puts the png file where you told it to go, and takes you back to your original psd document with no changes made to it. If confused see my How To Make Frames or Borders blog, which uses the same basic process, where a screenshot of how this dialog box should look is provided.
How to Add the Overlay png File to an Image.
1. Open your document and go to Adobe Bridge to find your Overlay. Click on thumbnail, right click and choose Place -> In Photoshop.
2. Now adjust the handles and size (since the file comes in as a Smart Object layer, it works like the Free Transform command) and place the overlay where you want it. Double-click inside the overlay or click the checkmark in Options Bar to set the placement.
3. I always get rid of the Smart Object now by right clicking on the layer in the Layers Panel and select Rasterize Layer from the menu.
4. To change the overlay color go to Layer -> New Fill Layer -> Solid Color and be sure to check Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask. Select any color you want – I usually sample with the eyedropper that appears when hovering over the image to set the color of the text.
5. On the overlay layer, adjust the opacity or add a layer mask and paint with a low opacity brush in the mask to lighten part of the text. This was done on the image above to soften the look a little. Use Free Transform (CTRL+T) to resize, turn or move the overlay.
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This vintage looking pink gerbera daisy that was growing on my porch was a perfect image to try out my own French overlay. First I had to make the overlay png file, then it was added to my final image. I would suggest that you check out the French Kiss website and/or Graphics Fairy website to get a feel on how to set up a custom overlay look. Create your overlay file by following The Basic Steps above. In my overlay, a fancy font called ExtraOrnamental No. 2 was used. The other font used is Easy Street Alt EPS. I found the filmstrip layer from my blog header and removed all the white from it as another layer. Some ornamentation was added using paintbrushes called 100 old ornaments–Buburu Resources – a New Layer was created and by rotating the direction of the brush, you can connect them to create some nice looking ornaments. Once you have all your layers set up, follow the steps in The Basic Steps section to create your png file. Keep you psd file so you can reuse the layers to create different but similar overlays. I did this for the last two images below. Follow the How to Use Overlay section to finish up your image. Four texture layers and a frame overlay were also used in the image above. The overlay was set to 66% opacity. Below is the png file as it appeared before adding to the flower image. 
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Here is another example of using several overlays that I created. I began this image by creating a png overlay file out of some daisies I found in an old Clip Art book called Flower Illustrations by Dover Publications that I bought years ago (there are still many similar books available on Amazon very inexpensively and can be a really fun resource). The clip art is just black lines on white. The white was deleted from the clip art by using Select -> Color Range and clicking on all the white so just the black lines were selected. Then I duplicated the selection by going to CTRL+J and just the line art shows up on the layer. This layer was taken into the Export Layers to Files using Steps 5 and 6 in The Basic Steps section above. Now I started a new document and added my new png flower layer. I decided to Warp it using Free Transform (CTRL+T) and selecting Warp in the Options Bar. By pulling on the different lines, you can get some very interesting effects. I felt this image looked like it was now blowing in the wind. Next I added a New Layer above and just painted different colors in the petals and stem. By lowering the opacity of the png flower layer, the lines disappeared and showed just the flower contours. I decided to create a text overlay png new file as described in The Basic Steps section above so I could use it again. Some text from Bob Dylan’s song “Blowin’ In the Wind” was added using 1942 Report font in purple-pink and a new png file was created. It was brought into my original document – the second time it was applied, it warped using CTRL+T again to get the crazy flying type look. A layer mask was added so the text could be removed from the flowers. Then I decided I wanted to create my own grunge border. There are several ways to do this (see my my How To Make Frames or Borders blog). This time I used NIK Color Efex Pro 4‘s Image Border filter and set Size to -100, Spread to 100, all the way Rough, and Vary to 9165. Once back in Photoshop, I selected the border using Color Range and placed it on its own layer. I cleaned up the lines using a fine black line and saved it down as a .png file so I can use it again. As you can see, there is a lot of repetition in this process. Not that difficult once you get a selection of what you want. I experimented with several different background colors and did add a soft white hazy look by painting on a layer using Nakatoni Texture Brush (I still cannot find them anymore) at a low opacity.
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This yellow mum shot uses the sames steps as the gerbera daisy image – a different line of text was added and several other elements removed from the same overlay psd file. Once the png file was added to the image, a Layer Style was applied to the png overlay layer using Bevel and Emboss and Outer Glow effects. The Outer Glow was spread out with a darker color to make the letters stand out a little better.
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This final example took yet another arrangement of other the text. Once the png file was brought into the image, it was warped to get the old look. Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 was used to get the vintage look. You can get really creative with the overlay layer effects.
Just remember to create a composite of all the layers to include in your overlay and save just that layer as a png. This is such a simple process, but it looks hard. Be sure when you do download a font that you understand what the usage requirements for that font are – just because you can download them does not mean they are free for all uses. This romantic French effect seems to lend itself nicely to flowers and soft texturized images. In my Tidbits Blog Displacing an Overlay I show you how to displace your overlay onto a textures background to give it a real vintage look. Also, check out my newer blog How To Create an Overlay Out of a Texture for more fun overlay tricks. Try making an overlay – it is fun to do!…..Digital Lady Syd
Digital Lady Syd Related Blogs:
Checking Out French Kiss Textures
A Vintage Butterfly Postcard Effect
Digital Lady Syd's Fun Photoshop Blog 