Photoshop Tutorial: Creating a Colour Wheel

Tutorial for creating a colour wheel in Adobe Photoshop

Follow these few simple steps to create your own colour wheel. Creating your own colour wheel will help you understand colour theory further.

Step 1: I have supplied you all with an image to begin with that contains the three primary colours. The image will be your base for the colour wheel.
Open the image in Photoshop.

Step 2:

Duplicate layer 1 - (cmd + J   OR   control + J)

Step 3:

• cmd + T   OR   control + T
• rotate image 60 degrees

Step 4:

Change blending mode to 'LIGHTEN'. This will create your secondary colours.

Step 5:

Merge the layers (cmd + e   OR   control + e)

Step 6:

Copy the layer again (cmd + J   OR   control + J)

Step 7:

Rotate the colour wheel 30 degrees.

Step 8:

Change the opacity on the copied layer to be 50%

Step 9:

Merge the layers (cmd + e   OR   control + e)

Step 10:

Apply "gradient overlay" to create tints and shades on the colour wheel

• fx + gradient overlay

• Change gradient style of "radial"
• Click "reverse" (making the gradient go from light to dark)

(Gradient overlay menu should look like this at the end of the step)

• Click on the gradient swatch because you will need a certain kind of gradient
• From drop down menu = "special effects"

• Append the effects when asked
• Once appended, select the gradient that is called "gray value stripes")

• Click okay
• Change the blend mode of the gradient to "Hard Light"

Your colour wheel should look something like this once you have completed all the steps.

Information retrieved from:

Lynda.com