[Zoner]

Shades and colour, eh? Hmm...lemme see.

Well, there's two indispensible parts of Photoshop for these types of things. One part is under the Adjust menu...it's Hue & Saturation.

So, if you want to change the colour of something, say a word or a shape, click Adjust > Hue & Saturation. This will open a dialog box with colour sliders. You'll notice a Colorize checkbox...check this off. Now you can play with the Hue, Saturation, and Lightness sliders until you get the colour you want.

With shading, there's a few things you can do. First, would be to click on Layer > Effects > Drop Shadow. This will put a shadow on the layer. Within the Effects dialog box, you can add glows, bevels, emboss, and other effects. Secondly with shading are lighting effects. Click Filter > Render > Lighting Effects. This will allow you do add different spotlight effects to the image. Used correctly, this can add subtle shades and colour/brightness variations to the image.

All I can say is dive into Photoshop and muck around. Once you learn the interface, all you need is a touch of creativity and you're golden.

Hope this helped a little.


Zone