How to design a knife with Photoshop

Mike Carter

Mike Carter

Well-Known Member
I created an extensive tutorial about how to design a knife in Photoshop. It is much too much to copy it all here so I will just provide a link to the tutorial on my website.

Photoshop Tutorial

Warning! This is an extensive step-by-step tutorial with over 150 illustrations. If you have Photoshop, this will show you how I design my knives with it. If you don't have Photoshop it will probably be a lot of technical stuff that you don't care about but it will show you some of what Photoshop can do.
 
That must have taken forever to create that tutorial. :eek: Great job Mike. 2thumbs I have CS4. Haven't learned to use it...yet.huh1
 
Yes, it took quite a while to create the tutorial. I started it a long time ago but the recent interest intutorials here prompted me to finish it.
 
Thank you so much for the tutorial Mike! I have been looking and hoping for something like this for several years now. I just went through your first page and it is great. Thank you again.
 
My pleasure. I had used Photoshop for a long time for photos but it opened up a whole new realm when I learned to use layers and paths.
 
Nice job! I don't do any of the color rendering you do, but your example looks really nice! I especially like the trick you use for making the grind look ground. I totally agree about Bezier paths and layers being amazing helpers when drawing. I've been using Corel's Paint Shop Pro X for my designs. My drawings are basically layout lines that I use to make templates for the blade and the handle.

One tip I have is when you're marking the pin holes for layout, put a crosshair in the center to make centerpunching easier! Like so:



If the design incorporates a radius that can be drilled out of the stock instead of cut or ground out, that drill location can also be marked with a crosshair, like in the pinky finger groove on this design:

 
Mike, Thanks for this tutorial! I use PSE.. smaller version, But still a VERY powerful tool!
I have fought the sizing issue.. and this has helped alot!

I really appreciate the time you spent to do this and wanted to say... THANKS!

God Bless YA!
 
Nice work Mike , look into downloading a trial version of either Captivate , or Camtasia , you can then record your steps in the software real time , and upload to the web via you tube or other ( you can upload as wmv , avi , mpeg , swf , etc ).

Really cool stuff.
 
Another trick I use is to scan a billet of damascus and then I can lay my design right on the billet at full size to see how the pattern flows with the shape of the blade.

Or, in some cases where I plan to cut several balnks from a billet, I can lay them out and position them to get the best use of the billet.
 
Amazing tutorial Mike, i have been wanting to learn this for a while

i actually just did this going step by step with your guidance

this came out , its not good but i guess its a start :)
28284_406745041127_565806127_4998200_3139677_n.jpg


when i tried doing the edge it came out like this
28284_406745046127_565806127_4998201_5094350_n.jpg


i JUST realized the error, i didnt go an entire "circle", so thats my bad, so to do such edge(grinding) as mine, i have to go along the outer edge and make the internal path?

many thanks
 
GLWJ/CK said:
That must have taken forever to create that tutorial. :eek: Great job Mike. 2thumbs I have CS4. Haven't learned to use it...yet.huh1
Click to expand...

actually i was using CS4 too, and not really very experienced with PS, but with the tutorial things went smoothly, everything was found easily :)

thanks again Mike, one of the most detailed tutorials i have seen2thumbs
 
You may need to make your edge or grind on a separate path. Sometimes when you are trying to draw two paths they want to connect in places you don't want them to. It looks like your second path (edge) is connecting to your path of the knife outline.
 
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