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Photoshop Tutorial #1
by Cybrea
This tutorial was created in PSCS2, but should also work in PS7.

Creating and Saving Your Own Styles!

Pattern & Texture Overlay

One of the features in Styles is "Pattern Overlay" and "Texture Overlay". Sometimes you may use it to enhance your style. We'll first learn how to save a pattern. The TEXTURE on the RIGHT will be used for the rest of this tutorial. Save the texture to desktop.

1-Then Open it in Photoshop.

2- With the texture open Go to Edit Menu > Define As Pattern. A new name will be saved for this. The new pattern can be viewed in several places. You do not have to look now. But it's there!  Edit>Preset Manager>Patterns. You can easily delete from here. You can also find your new pattern if you choose Fill > Custom Pattern. And the part we are getting to.. Layer>Layer Style>Pattern Overlay. Your newest pattern is at the bottom of the texture picker!

Creating A New Style Set

Before creating the styles, we need to set up our Style Palette to store all the new styles to be saved in a  SET.

Go to Windows>Styles to bring up the palette. Hold down the little arrow on the right, and choose reset styles if you have other ones open.  Whilte holding down the ALT key... click on the buttons you want to remove.  Don't remove them all, leave at least one, otherwise it will not let you save a new palette if empty. You can also remove buttons by right clicking on them and choosing delete. Now...under the little arrow to the right> Save Styles with a New Name. Save them to Presets/Styles folder of Photoshop.

Anytime you want to add to your new palette, choose it from the list and hit OK so only your styles load up. Any style that is still open on the screen can be added to the palette.

Creating the Style

A style is created by using any effect under Layer> Layer Style. 

Lets create a quick style, using a pattern overlay for this tutorial.  The blue pattern image above should have been saved as a Pattern, if not go back to Pattern & Texture Overlay.  
tip: Your style will look different on a black or white background, so you might want to create a new layer behind your style to try different effects.

Step 1 - Create a New Document, and type something, anything on this layer will be affected. (One style can look very different on various fonts and shapes). I'm using the font Comic Sans and the letter A. 

Step 2 - Go to Layer> Layer Style>Blending Options.

Step 3 - Highlight PATTERN OVERLAY and choose the new Pattern we added above. Scale the pattern to size 4 for this particular effect, but it can be scaled to any size.

Step 4 - Now Choose Satin and change the settings like in the image below.
  SATIN

5- Now Choose BEVEL & EMBOSS
Change Style to Outer Bevel and Depth to 221%. Contour & Texture remain unchecked.

I added a new black layer underneath to see how my letter looks with a black background. Your finished letter should look like this.

There are so many variations to change the styles and get different effects that look like metal, glass, etc.  This is only a simple sample.

Saving the Styles

You can save the style in two ways. Choose New Style from the blending options window, or if you have already hit OK you can also choose it by clicking the little arrow on the right of the Styles Palette and choose New Style. It will ask you to name the Style.  A new button will appear with a little preview of your new Style.

Don't forget to Save Your Collection after you've added something new, by holding down the little arrow >Save Styles and rename it to the same name you have been using so it will overwrite, or start a new collection, You can have many.

Altering existing Styles.

You may want to alter a style you created and make a  new one from it. Maybe one that looks good on a white background and one for black.  Load up your new Style Palette if it's not already open.  We are going to open an existing style and look at it. Type something on the screen, apply a style. Maybe add a background layer so you can judge how you want to change it.

Notice the layer you applied the style too, has a little f (where circled in red, see below image). If you click this, it will open the style so you can see what it consists of. This is also good if you download styles off the web, you can learn how they are made. Some of the items cannot be changed, like pattern overlay I think. Notice how my style has a white outer glow. If I was using a white background I would want to remove that, or add a drop shadow. Double click on any of the items to open the blending options. Adjust accordingly and Add New Style as we did above. Now you have an altered version of an existing style. Remember to save your palette!

Flattening your letters or ornaments "to remove the style mode"

After applying your styles to the ornament or logo, create a new layer (make sure it is blank).  Then Layers>Merge Visible.
Your ornament should now be on it's own transparent layer for use.

Tips:

Tip: You'll get best results if you select Smooth for your font.

Tip: You can also add a blank button to remove all styles, by opening blending options with no styles applied and selecting New Style.

Tip: You can create practice sets and append them later to your main set and save.

Tip: Once your image is flattened you can use the hue/saturation, color, channel mixer or anything else to make it look better.

Tip: Styles work best on Fonts. Try using them on decorative fonts as well as letters.

Tip: If you use gradient overlay remember the colors will change according to where your objects/letters are on the screen. In other words if you have several objects on the same layer, each object will be a slightly different color.

Important: Before switching to another style palette, if you have added any new styles make sure to save your SET, or the new styles will be lost!