Image editing for the rest of us
In this tutorial I will show you how to create a Christmas design you can send to your friends. We will use the brush tool and some filters to create the effect. It’s super simple, and it won’t take more than 30 minutes to achieve the same result.
Step 1
Open Pixelmator and create a new document. I used 1440 x 900 pixels. Fill the background layer with a dark red (#130505)

Step 2
Click on the Type Tool (T) and then View > Show Fonts. Select Zapfino and 90-100 for the size. Type “Merry Xmas”.

Step 3
Holding Commmand, click on the thumbnail of the layer in the Layers Panel. That will load a marquee selection of the text.

Step 4
Go to Edit > Refine Selection. Increase the Feather to 20 and the Size to 30%.

Step 5
The text and the selection will be larger than the text. Add a new layer.

Step 6
Select the Brush Tool (B) and go to View > Show Brushes. Let’s use a default stars brush that comes with Pixelmator. Double click on the preset to change it. Use the image below for reference.

Step 7
Add a new layer and fill it with black, then change Blending to Color Dodge. With the Brush Tool (B) and the stars brush, select white for the color and start painting within the selection. After you finish this, duplicate the layer to make the lights stronger. You can even go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and use 10 for the Radius to create a nice glowing effect.

Step 8
Add a new layer and fill it with black, then get the text layer you hid and show it again. The text layer will be on top of the black layer. Select both and go to Layer > Merge Layers. Change Blending to Color Dodge and go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Use 17 for the Radius. That will make the “Merry Xmas” phrase more visible.

Step 9
Creating flares in Pixelmator is super simple. Add a new layer and fill it with black, then go to Filter > Generator > Star Shine. Use the image below for the values. Then just change Blending to Color Dodge, and you will have a beautiful flare effect.

Step 10
Duplicate and resize the flares, positioning them at the edge of the areas that are shinier.

Step 11
Import a Santa icon and place it in your design. I positioned mine directly below the “X”. With the Brush tool select the stars brush and click-paint some stars coming out of Santa’s glass of wine. Reduce the brush size to make the stars small inside the glass.

Step 12
With the Brush tool (B) and a regular rounded brush, create a light spot below Santa. Go to Edit > Free Transfor to adjust the perspective. Simply resize it vertically, then go to Image > Colorize. Change the saturation until you get a nice red color.

Step 13
Add a new layer on top of the background layer; it will be beneath all other layers. Then go to Filter > Quartz Composer > Generator > Floor. Use the default preset. After that go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal, then change Blending to Screen.

Step 14
Position the light floor effect right below Santa—our little Santa has to be in the center of the light spot. Then go to Image > Colorize. Once again move Saturation until you get a nice red color, and reduce the lightness to reduce the light effect .

Step 15
Select all layers and duplicate them, then, with the duplicated copies selected, go to Layer > Merge Layers. After that go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Use 25 for the Radius.

Step 16
Change the Blending of the blurry layer to Screen. You will have a very shiny image with lots of glow. With the Eraser Tool (E) delete most of the layer, leaving only the light text and the top of Santa glowing.

Step 17
Select all layers and duplicate them, then merge all the duplicated layers again, so you end up with one layer with the image. Then go to Filter > Halftone > CMYK Halftone. Reduce the width to 2 and the Sharpness to 30. Also change the angle to -11. Use the image below for reference. This filter will give the design a very nice printed paper style.

Conclusion
In this tutorial I’ve shown you how to create a nice light text effect with stars. We once again used the powerful brush engine and some basic filters. We also added a retro feel to the image using one of my favorite filters in Pixelmator, the CMYK Halftone. The thing I like the most in Pixelmator is that it’s super fast :)
I hope you all have a Happy Christmas and a wonderful New Year.
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December 22nd, 2009 at 7:48 am
This is awesome!!! So cool. I love Pixelmator!
Merry Christmas,
-Jeremy
December 22nd, 2009 at 8:51 pm
I still think that although your tutorials are of amazing things you forget to make it easy for people to follow. I am never able to make anything remotely similar to what you make because you SKIP steps. Or assume people know things about the program. I have been using the program for a while now and love it. I get more frustrated with your tutorials then anything because they are not easy to follow.
December 23rd, 2009 at 6:24 am
Great tutorial, finally I understand how to use color dodge for those effects. But I disagree with Luke – I’m really no professional, but in my oppinion it’s very easy to follow your good written tutorials.
Thank you very much, and have a merry christmas,
Daniel
December 23rd, 2009 at 7:19 am
I have to agree with Luke. Even though the author spent good amount of time for preparing this tutorial (and thanks very much for that), please consider the total newbies to the Pixelmator software. There are a lot of sections that you forgot to mention on this tutorial. After Step 6, I was lost because the outcome is totally different to the one on the screenshot. On Step 8, you said “Add a new layer and fill it with black, then get the text layer you hid and show it again”. You didn’t mention anywhere before Step 8 regarding hiding a text layer for example.
If you could fix this small issues, then these tutorials will serve the purpose much better.
But, as always, thanks for putting this together. At least it is useful to the ones who is a bit more knowledgeable to the software.
December 23rd, 2009 at 9:15 am
Great Job! I agree with the above, it’s very hard to follow because there seems to be steps that you skip. Really nice art nonetheless.
December 23rd, 2009 at 9:44 am
Very nice… But, since I a newbie in Pixelmator, I can’t follow the tutorial.
I was hopping to use those tutorials to learn about pixelmator. But they are pretty hard to follow.
December 23rd, 2009 at 2:09 pm
in step 7, was the color supposed to be red? you said make it white but it doesnt work for me…
December 23rd, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Just as some of the people above I have to say the tutorial’s a bit difficult for me to follow. I’m not experienced in using Pixelmator and because of that some of the instructions are not obvious for me. The picture’s great – I wish some day I could create one like that myslef… I’ll keep on trying.
December 27th, 2009 at 11:26 am
I agree with Luke – my projects never come out the same as in the tutorials… Are you skipping steps? I love this program and would love it even more if I knew what I was doing hahaha
December 28th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
I didn’t manage to make it. There is some missed step.
I hope you’ll soon fix it because you’ve got a wonderful result.
December 28th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Very nice image, but could not understand the steps required. Are there missing steps? Any information would be helpful. I would like to try this even though Christmas has come and gone. Thank you
December 30th, 2009 at 5:45 am
Thanks a lot for the comments, the idea of this tutorials is to show how you can create those images, I provide the basic information necessary because the idea is that you play with the tool.
However I will start giving more details or maybe recording a video showing the whole process.
Thanks again and happy 2010 to all ;)
January 3rd, 2010 at 8:56 am
I’m using pixelmator in french and it’s not easy to follow steps (ex. what is color dodge?).. A sceenshot of tool and menu you are using will be appreciate.
Thank’s for the great tutorials.
January 4th, 2010 at 10:46 am
I find the instructions unclear also. My brushes pallet is different than the brushes pallet you show in your tutorial. My version of Pixelmator is 1.5 spider (3901). A beautiful program but difficult for an 87 year old newbie to figure out..
January 9th, 2010 at 6:56 pm
I saw this tutorial and thought the design concept would be great for a look on a project I’m working on. After getting to step 7-8 and not having anything close to the look shown, I also agree about skipped steps. The first step it seems quite obvious. It says to make the background a dark red but black is shown. Step 5 ends with “add a new layer” and step six is selection of the proper brush with no adjustment to the image. Step 7 then states to add another new layer while step 8 as already mentioned states to unhide a layer but no step shows a layer to be hidden. I want to thank you for the guidance to help learn the program, but someone needs to run through the steps before being published to see that nothing is missing or even comes to the same results at each step.
January 10th, 2010 at 12:35 am
man that was hard! I did something a little different but same concept and you did miss alot of steps! here’s mine, not nearly as good but i gave up.
http://i.imgur.com/fhEs8.jpg
January 10th, 2010 at 12:35 am
lol woops wrong tut, i mean here it is http://i.imgur.com/859gH.jpg
January 30th, 2010 at 8:52 am
any chance you could update this tutorial with some extra steps?
March 10th, 2010 at 5:50 am
Awesome tutorial but I’m afraid I’ll need to agree on the “missing steps” part. Though for me it was no problem because I’ve been using Pixelmator some time, there was also the flare part where Color Dodge doesn’t seem to be working for me (Screen, or other beldning modes in the same category seem to fix this more or less though).
Thanks!
May 6th, 2010 at 2:20 am
Hi,
I’m definitely new at pixelmator but really would like to use this tutorial for something I’m working on, but I’m stuck!
At step 8 my writing comes out red – can anyone help me? how do I make it white like the image shown in step 8.
Thanks,
Justine