How to create a realistic beer bottle in Photoshop

Pixel Perfect is the "perfect" show to help you with your Photoshop skills. Be amazed and learn as master digital artist Bert Monroy takes a stylus and a digital pad and treats it as Monet and Picasso do with oil and canvas. Learn the tips and tricks you need to whip those digital pictures into shape with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. In this episode, Ben shows you how to create a realistic beer bottle in Photoshop.

Design a custom, ice-cold beer bottle using Adobe Photoshop. Bert demonstrates how to create realistic effects for the bottle, beer, and condensation with simple layer styles.

Create a beer bottle shape in Illustrator: Due to the ease of use in Adobe Illustrator, we start there to create a beer bottle shape using the pen tool. An effective way to create this shape is to draw half of bottle, select all points, and reflect them across the vertical axis. Use Command J to join the end points, creating a single object. Copy and paste your shape into Photoshop as a path.

Apply color and glow in Photoshop: In a new Photoshop layer, fill with a nice yellowish beer color. Apply a large sized Inner Glow with the Layer Style palette. Change the glow color to a deep, darker orange. Separate the layer effects into it's own layer (Layer Style > Create Layer) and apply another dark Inner Glow to the original layer for more tonality.

To add a glare to the bottle, use a large, soft-edged brush and add white strokes to the bottle in a new layer. Bring down the opacity of these glares and change the layer style to "Screen". The same concept is applied to create dark areas on the bottle.

Fill the beer bottle path in a new layer with the color grey. Create a shape to specify where the liquid exists and apply a layer mask. Again, Bert applies an inner glow to make the bottle's neck appear empty.

Search Pixel Perfect on WonderHowTo for more Photoshop episodes from this Revision3 show.