OK, here goes. In this example, I'm going to take this -



and finish with this -



Here's how I did it. Of course, the standard disclaimer: This is not saying it is the definitive method, there are many ways to achieve the same result, this is just my way.

I apologize to any non-Photoshop users out there, this is certainly possible to do in other programs but I don't know them well enough to make this tutorial 'multi-lingual.'

I usually make a copy of the background layer. Its not essential but can be useful if you make an uncorrectible mistake.


You can do this a number of ways, I usually drag the layer onto the New Layer icon at the bottom of the palette. Name this new layer Phone Body and hide the original.

Next, make sure you're working on the newly created layer, select the Custom Shape Tool



Choose any shape from the top toolbar (we'll use a heart for this tutorial).



Draw the shape out of the menu. its best to find a plain white part of the image so you can see the shape properly.



Dont worry about the size for the moment, well deal with that next.

Select Free Transform from the Edit menu (CTRL+T on PCs). Move the shape over the top of the phone's screen.



Ive stretched the shape using distortion (hold CTRL when dragging the corners), this helps to match the perspective, as you can line the bounding box up with the phones own vertices.

It looks a little odd at the moment, so grab the central handles and size it down to roughly match the size of the screen.



When you have it at the size you want, hit Enter or the Tick in the top toolbar to set it.

I recommend saving the new shape's path at this point, again, it's useful if you need to replicate it later on.



Select the Paths Tab on the Layer Palette and clicking the arrow in the corner. You can call it anything, but Heart would be descriptive.

We now need to make the shape into a selection. CTRL+Click (for PCs) on the Heart path thumbnail and youll get the marching ants on your path.



Now its time to blend the shape in. First youll need to invert the selection either by pressing Shift+CTRL+I (for PCs) or from the Select Menu. This will allow you to draw over everything that's not in the center of the shape.

Select the Clone Stamp Tool. The size of the brush depends on the size of your image, so pick one that will give you good coverage but not be too cumbersome. Set the hardness to about 95-99%.

Sample from a clear area and start brushing over the original screen image. You can freely go around and up to the edges of the shape as it is protected by the selection border. On this image, there is a slight tonal difference between the top and the bottom, so I selected areas from both ends to get a better match. It can be tricky to avoid patches, so you may have to sample an area again to get rid of them. If you have Photoshop 7, you can use the Healing Brush (make sure that you have gone right up to the edges of the selection with the Clone Brush or youll find it will pick up the tones from the original image).

Make sure you are working on the Phone Base layer and invert the selection again, so its only surrounding the shape.



Hit CTRL+Shift+J (for PCs) or from the Layer Menu > New Layer > Via Cut. This removes the selection from the body of the phone, leaving a heart shaped hole. Name the new layer Screen Base.

Reselect the shape on the new layer by CTRL+Clicking (for PCs) the layer thumbnail. From the Select Menu, go to Modify > Expand. Again, the amount is relative to the size of the image. It should be a few pixels larger than the original so I used 10 in this example.



Move this layer down so that its underneath the Phone Base layer. Select a suitable color for an LCD screen (in this case I used Light Pea Green from the colour swatches). On the Edit Menu, choose Fill, set the Contents to Foreground Color, Mode: Normal, Opacity: 100%. Then click OK and you should have a nice green heart.

With the shape still selected, select the Phone Body layer, click CTRL+J (for PCs) or Layers > New > Via Copy. Name the new layer Bezel. Well come back to this later.

We will also need a couple of duplicates of the screen layer, so drag the Screen Base layer onto the New Layer icon a couple of times and rename them Screen Middle and Screen Top.



Your layer palette should look something like the picture above.

Youll notice that the screen looks too plain and flat, well sort that out.



Hide the Screen Top and Screen Middle layers and select Screen Base. From the Filter Menu, select Noise > Add Noise. Change the settings to match those above, it will give it the grainy LCD look.

Most screens sit a few millimeters below the body of the phone, so lets give it a shadow for some depth.



First, select the Phone Body layer and using the Polygonal Lasso, draw a box around the heart, leaving a fairly wide border. Press CTRL+J (for PCs) to create a new layer from the selection and name it Shadow.



Move the layer between Screen Top and Screen Middle.

Double-click the layer thumbnail > select Drop Shadow and enter the values as shown.



Your screen should look something like this.

OK, time to give the phone a bit of a feature. Remember the Bezel Layer we created a couple of screens back? Well, its time has come. Hide the Shadow Layer temporarily, so it doesn't cause a distraction.



CTRL+Click (for PCs) its thumbnail to select it. Go to the Edit menu, select Fill and set Contents to White, Mode: Normal > 100% Opacity.



Go to Select > Deselect (CTRL+D for PCs) to remove the selection, press D to revert to the default palette, then go to Filters > Render > Difference Clouds and you should have something that looks like the picture above.



Double click on the Bezel Layer icon or select Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options. You will get a dialog box like the one above. Select Bevel and Emboss and set the parameters accordingly. Click in each box to bring up the palette. The shading colors are as follows:

Highlight colors are R=98:G=134:B=159 and the Shadow colors are: R=213:G=213:B=235.

Select Contour and set the Contour Mode to Half Round > Anti-Aliased and Range 50%.



Now select Gradient Overlay and set the parameters the same as above.



After following these steps, you should have something that looks like this.

You could, of course, stop here but images like this always look better if theyre a bit more active, so lets give it something to display.



Select the Screen Middle layer and then choose the Text Tool. For this image I set the text attributes to regular, 88px and crisp. The colour is black (obvious really).

The envelope is from the standard Windows Wingding set and corresponds to the asterisk (shift 8), the text is Hattenschweiller but any font could be used.

Once you have the text the way you want it, click the layer entry in the palette, this sets it down and will allow you to move, rotate and stretch the text using the Free transform tool we discussed earlier (CTRL+T for PCs).



You may notice that even though it has been rotated, it still doesnt look quite right, this is because of the perspective of the phone. You cant distort text while its in this state, so the next thing you need to do is make it a Raster Layer. This is done by choosing Layer > Rasterize > Type. You can now distort it the same as normal image layer using the different transform options listed with the transform tool.



Again, lining up can be tricky, especially as the text is quite small and there isnt much of an edge to go by, I used the same method as I did with the original heart shape of stretching it out to line it up and then sizing it back down again, once Id created the distortion.



Set the opacity of the text layer to about 60%, this will take the boldness of the text away. You may also want to add a little shadow (which can be seen on some LCD displays) for added realism. To do this, select layer blending and use the default drop shadow settings.