Curving petals of a flat flower element

10 posts / 0 new
Last post
Curving petals of a flat flower element

PSE or PSP
Please could anyone tell me how to change a flat (patterned) flower element so that its petals look curved like a real flower?

Elif has these curved styles which may help.

The only way I know how to do it is adding shadows in the right places (which looks to be what Elif's style pack does), and maybe warping the shape as well.

Thank you. I will try them.

You can also try locking the transparency and using either a low-opacity soft brush or the Dodge and Burn tools to add dimension. Keep your opacities low and your brush tips big and soft so you can build up slowly rather than ending up having to undo a too-strong effect.

If your program doesn't have those, there's a really old-school (mid-90s) trick that works in any program that can do clipping masks. Create a new layer and fill it with #c0c0c0 using the paint bucket, then put that layer in Overlay mode. Now use a big soft black brush at a low opacity setting on the brush to darken part of that overlay layer where you want the flower to be darker, and swap to white to lighten it in spots. You could also use smaller soft black and white brushes on that layer to create ripples in the petals or an embossed vein pattern. It's an ancient technique, and somewhat more labor-intensive than modern Photoshop tools, but you can get truly individual results with it, too.

Another thing you can try is a radial gradient overlay that goes black-white-black from the center out to the ends of the petals. Put it in Overlay blend mode and lower the opacity.

Thank you Holly.
I will experiment with these suggestions.

I did a flower made out of pieces of paper for a challenge and I used the transform/warp function to curve my petals and even twist some so they looked flipped up on the edge......once.....I get enough credits here....I'll post the pic for you to see in case you still need a reference.....

If you are using PaintShop Pro, you can play with different factors:

- the shape can be tweaked with the Warp Brush
- the shadow can be stretched in some area to simulate a lifted edge
- the brightness will give the viewer the impression that the sections are lifted where one side will be lighter (facing the light source) or darker (receiving less light).

Thank you for your helpful suggestion. I will try it.

Thank you for these helpful suggestions. They will keep me busy for some time!