Step 17: Create A New Layer Group

As I mentioned at the bottom of the previous page, I'm going to finish my design by adding a few scattered stars around the silhouettes. I could draw a star from scratch if I wanted, but Photoshop actually ships with a couple of star shapes that we can use. Before we add them, let's create a Layer Group to place all of our stars in. This way, we'll keep our Layers palette clean and organized. First, click on the top-most layer in your Layers palette to select it. Then, hold down your Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key and click on the Layer Group icon at the bottom of the Layers palette (note: in earlier versions of Photoshop, Layer Groups are known as Layer Sets):

By holding down Alt/Option when clicking on the icon, we tell Photoshop to pop up the New Group dialog box for us where we can enter a name for our new layer group. I'm going to name mine "Stars":

Click OK when you're done to exit out of the dialog box. If we look in the Layers palette now, we can see that a new layer group named "Stars" has been added above the other layers. A layer group is basically a folder in the Layers palette that we can place multiple layers inside of, which helps keep everything organized:

Step 18: Select The Custom Shape Tool

Select Photoshop's Custom Shape Tool, which you'll find hiding behind the Rectangle Tool in the Tools palette. Click and hold your mouse down on the Rectangle Tool for a second or two until the fly-out menu appears, then select the Custom Shape Tool from the bottom of the list:

Step 19: Load The "Shapes" Custom Shape Set

Photoshop comes with a lot of custom shapes that we can use in our designs, but only a few of them are loaded in already for us. To access the star shapes, we'll need to load in one of the additional custom shape sets ourselves. With the Custom Shape Tool selected, right-click (Win) / Control-click (Mac) anywhere inside the document window to bring up the Custom Shape selection box, then click on the small right-pointing arrow in the top right corner of the selection box:

This bring up a fly-out menu, and at the bottom of the menu, you'll see a series of custom shape sets that we can load. Click on the Shapes set to select it:

Photoshop will pop up a dialog box asking if you want to replace the current shapes with the shapes in the Shapes set. Click Append, which will add the shapes in the Shapes set without removing the shapes that are already available:

If you scroll down inside the Custom Shape selection box now, you'll see the newly added shapes that are available. You'll find two star shapes, "5 Point Star" and "5 Point Star Frame" (if you have "Show Tool Tips" enabled in Photoshop's Preferences, the names of the shapes will appear as you mouse over them). I'm going to select the "5 Point Star Frame" shape by clicking on it:

I want to use the same orange color that I used for my stroke, so to change the shape color, I'll click on the color swatch in the Options Bar at the top of the screen:

This brings up Photoshop's Color Picker, but I'm not going to use. Instead, just as I did for the stroke color, I'm going to move my mouse cursor over an area of orange in my document window and I'll click on it to sample the color:

Step 20: Drag Out The First Star Shape

With the color now chosen, we can begin adding stars to the design. Hold down your Shift key to constrain the proportions of the star, making sure not to distort the look of it, then click inside the document where you want to add the first star and drag out a star shape. Hold down Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) as well if you want to drag the star shape out from its center. If you need to reposition the star as you're dragging, hold down your spacebar and move your mouse to reposition the shape, then release your spacebar and continue dragging. Here, I've added my first star shape in the bottom left corner of the image:

Step 21: Rotate The Star With Free Transform

Press Ctrl+T (Win) / Command+T (Mac) to bring up Photoshop's Free Transform box and handles around the star, then move your mouse cursor outside of the Free Transform box, click and drag your mouse to rotate the star if needed:

Press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) when you're done to accept the rotation and exit out of the Free Transform command.

Step 22: Add Additional Star Shapes

Add additional star shapes by repeating the last couple of steps. First, drag out the shape, then rotate the shape if needed with Free Transform. Here's my image after adding a few more stars:

Step 23: Select the "5 Point Star" Shape

With the Custom Shape Tool still selected, right-click (Win) / Control-click (Mac) anywhere inside the document to once again bring up the Custom Shape selection box, then select the other star shape, the "5 Point Star" shape:

Step 24: Add More Stars

With the "5 Point Star" shape selected, follow the same steps to add more stars, first dragging them out and then rotating them with the Free Transform command. If we look in our Layers palette now, we can see all of the shape layers we've added, each one containing one of the star shapes. Notice how they all appear inside the "Stars" layer group:

To show you what I meant about using layer groups to keep things organized, click on the small triangle to the left of the layer group's name. This will close the layer group, and now all of the stars layers are conveniently tucked away inside the layer group, even though they still remain visible in the document:

And here's my final silhouette design after adding a few more stars using the "5 Point Star" shape:

And there we have it!

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