Joe2Torials.com

Mesh Effect

OK, say you have an image and you want to add something to make it look that bit better but don't exactly know what to do, well here is a nice little effect to give your image that 'something' it's missing.

Create a new image with a transparent background, I have used 8x8 pixels. You can use a bigger size if you wanted but this size will do.

Now, select the pencil tool and set the brush to 1 (smallest size). This can be any colour you want. Draw a line on the outside of your transparent image to make it look like the example below (this image was zoomed in to 1600%).

Click on edit > define pattern, you will get a dialogue box asking for a name, this simply means the name we are going to give the pattern, make it something relevant like wireframe, cube or like I have named it; 'mesh'. Click on OK to continue.

Take your image that you want to apply this wireframe (mesh) to and then create a new layer on top of your original. Name it mesh.

On your new layer select the whole screen, you can do this by pressing CTRL+A. Once selected go to edit > fill or use the shortcut CTRL + backspace to bring up the fill dialogue box.

Click on the drop down menu and select pattern, then select your custom pattern by clicking the little arrow to open another small menu containing all the patterns available and selecting the pattern we made earlier.

Once you have your pattern selected click on OK, you will now see something that looks like this:

You now have your basic wireframe over your image, but now we need to make it more appealing. Right click on your 'mesh' layer (in the layers box) and select blending options or you could just as easily click on layer > layer style > blending options. Now from here, you can change absolutely anything, the trick is to play around. Here is what i made by just playing, now you can see it's got that something extra it was lacking.