I welcome you in foundation of creativity and shape manipulation techniques. We will be using Photoshop in this tutorial. Moreover on the first stage of our tutorial we will be using an Application that is called alchemy -  http://al.chemy.org/download/. Although it is still in Alpha testing this software very fun to use and to create shapes with.

So let's get going:

First a small overview of the application that is, once again, called - alchemy.

Here is the main window with all the basic settings.



The basic settings:
Style: outline or fill
Line weight: defines the line diameter.

Color: color palette (could have been better).
Foreground and background ticker: choose between them (without color selection).
Transparency settings: defines the line or fill transparency.

Direct shape settings:
Create: choose the style of shape you want to create.

Affect (not effect): the effect applied to your shape or line.
Clear: clear the working area.

Note: There is no Undo in this application, so if you messed up with your shape there will be no turning back. Try to save any successfully created shape.

For more detailed information you can visit AL.CHemy.org or read the manual that comes with the application itself.

So let's crate some shapes now. Here is my first shape.




I usually use Type shapes:



And the effect of shape will be: displace.



As you chose the Affect, the sub panel will appear.

So here you can see type shape and displace settings. You have to try them to really understand what they are all about.



And so I've created some type shapes. As you can see we have 2 with a different color there. It really helps to play with contrasts and different color modes in Ps. But we will not need this I think so ).







You can export the shapes in PNG with transparency. And this is just a great feature.







Here I am in Photoshop and what I'm going to do in first place is to separate this document into separate single shape layers.



I think we will choose only 4 and in several steps get rid of 2 more.

So just playing with these shapes I've just stick them together.

And to for better reason I put numbers on the layers.







So I really didn't like the yellow one. I got rid of it.

So I really didn't know what to do with this shape first. But you got to know that to figure out the design you have to spend some time to really figure out what this shape does remind you, is all about, to realize what you want to do with it. Flipping, transforming, rotating and distorting the shape can help you make it faster.

So first I say there a ship or something, of course from the future or something, it has a very interesting shape I think.

And as my next step i will chose a soft brush set it air Brush. )) well in fact I really even don't even know what this icon is for if you have the tablet. The funniest thing is that I have my Wacom left at my office right knows so I'll be creating this one as the most of you I think - with a mere Mouse).

That's explains the "airbrush technique"))) that I'm using. I've also set the flow definition to 25%. Man)) if you had a pressure sensitive mouse buttons or something...

Create a layer beneath the shape layer or just in the middle of these 2.

Here is my airbrush effect,