How to make the confetti in this icon . . .

For PS CS2.

This is pretty much just an adaptation of awmpdotnet's tutorial for falling snow.

So go there, and do every thing she says, except when it comes time to paint the snow, do this instead:

1) Choose a square brush, 5px.

2) Change the brush settings:
brush tip shape: spacing = 500%
shape dynamics: size jitter = 100%, angle jitter = 15% (my setting, you can do more if you like)
scattering: scatter = 1000%, count = 3

3) Then paint wherever you want to the confetti to be. Make sure none of the squares get cut off, cause that'll look weird.

4) ctrl + click your confetti layer to select all the little squares, then make a new layer.

5) Apply any gradient of your choosing to the new layer. I picked a default rainbow. Because you selected only the squares you painted the gradient will go only on them. Merge that layer down on to the brush layer.

6) Make a new layer, and change your brush tip size to 3. Again paint with the white and then apply the gradient as you did for the large brush layer.

At this point go back to awmpdotnet's tutorial and carry on with the rest of the instructions.

(The font I used is "Beyond Wonderland" and the pic is a stock photo of a snowy mountain that I colored to make it look like night.)

To go from this to this

( comic books . . .  )

Photoshop Elements 4.0

The loverly Justin Poortinga:

Going from this:

to this:

( here we go . . . )

I'm using Photoshop Elements 4.0, so I'm sure this would be heaps easy for any higher level software.

I chose this pic because it was fairly simple, not a lot of extra stuff.

So we're going from this: to this:

( still with me? )