Waving Flags

Support your country by learning how to make national waving flags online.

1. To start with, you will need your flat flag image. You may want to search Google for a nice flag image. So make a New Image: 500 x 500px with a white background. Paste your flag image into the center of your image. Next, hold CTRL and click on the layer containing your flag to select it. Then, Press X then D to reset the colors. Now, go to Edit > Stroke and choose a setting of 1 px and make sure center is selected. Your image should now look like mine, unless of course you're not supporting England.

2. Now that the basic flat flag is sorted, its time to make it wave. First, we want to create the shadows that make it appear waving. To do this hold CTRL and click on the flag layer to select it. Press X, then D to reset your colors. Now make sure you are using the reflected gradient as shown in the picture.

Create a new layer. Now, drag the gradient horizontally a few times to get a pattern like mine. Try to match mine as close you can to get a realistic outcome. It may take a few tries.

3. Once you have it looking similar to the picture, go to the Layers tab and lower that layers Opacity to about 30% depending on what flag you are working on. Next, with the black shadows layer selected, press CTRL + E which will merge the layer with the flag one below. It should be looking like the image on the left. We have the shadows, now we need to make it wave.

4. Make sure you have nothing selected by clicking CTRL +D. Now go to Filter > Liquify (in Photoshop 7.0) or Image > Adjust > Liquify (in Photoshop 6.0). Then select the Warp Tool , set the Brush Size to 73 and Pressure to 12. Then, simply dray it to shape, you will need to change the brush size to modify various parts. Again, see if you can get it to look like the one on the left. The way you modify it depends on where your shadows are. If you make a mistake just press CTRL + Z to undo. When your happy with it click ok.

5. Its starting to look pretty good now except you may have slightly jagged edges, but not to worry, we have a solution. Use the Blur tool with the following settings:

. Now paint around the black line around the flag. This will make it smooth like a baby's bottom. I now simply added a drop shadow to mine, but that's optional.

6. You are basically done now! You may want to add a flagpole and I also gave mine some text just to polish it off. Hope you enjoyed the tutorial!