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How to make 3D arrowheads in photoshop

Here I shall show you how to make 3D arrowheads in photoshop. Well, it’s too easy. See below, the step by step procedure to make a cool 3d arrowheads in photoshop.

Here’s the final result.

To create cool arrowheads in photoshop , first open a new document of sufficiently big in size. I have opened a picture of below mentioned parameters –

Width: 650 pixels

Height: 450 pixels

Resolution: 72 pixels per inch

Mode: RGB color

Background/content: white.

Now pick up “custom shape tool”.

After you select custom shape tool, you’ll see some options at the top taskbar. From there you can select the custom shape you want to draw. We need to select “arrow 1” shape as shown in the picture.

Now draw an arrow using that tool. Remember the arrow will pickup the foreground color. So, if you want the arrow to be of any specific color, then before start drawing, select the color as foreground color.

Now, press “Ctrl+t”. This will select the whole picture with rectangular marquee tool for free transform.

You can rotate the picture. Just point your cursor at one of the corners and the point when your cursor takes a 90⁰ bend shape, it is ready for rotation. Rotate it as shown in the picture.

Now, go to Layer – > duplicate layer. Click “OK” in the dialogue box. Go to image -> adjust -> hue/saturation. Now adjust the saturation of the newly created layer in such a way that the new layer can form a shadow of the original layer.

Now click on the move tool. Next press down the “Alt” key or “Alt+ Ctrl” depending on the version of photoshop.(in CS5 it is “Alt+ Ctrl” but in some older versions, it is only “Alt”) and press the down arrow key few times(with Alt or Alt+Ctrl key pressed).

You’re done. The picture should look like something like this.

To make 3D arrowheads in photoshop, remember few important points:

1. In photoshop, the operation we carriedout by pressing down arrow key with Alt/Alt+Ctrl pressed is called “Nudging”. If you see the layer panel, you’ll see lot of nudged layers at the end.
2. Always nudge the background layer and not the fore ground layer. At the end, click on the foreground layer to see the final image.
3. Always click on the “move” tool before starting nudge. Otherwise nudge command i.e. Alt+ Down key(or Alt+Ctrl+Down key) will not work at all.

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