To see this tutorial with reference photos, check my blog:[link]
The other day I had an idea for a poster design that involved a vinyl record. I thought about taking a photo of one of my own records, like I had done for this cd packaging I designed last year
but I had previously had issues with too much noise in the image (time for a new camera!). Instead, I decided to make one using photoshop and freehand mx. Turns out it wasn't that difficult to make, and I was pleased with the results. I considered giving away the image for free here on the blog, and then thought, even better; I'll make a tutorial! (and give away the image as well). So here you have it, this is how I made my record from scratch:
In freehand, draw a perfect circle by holding down the shift key while dragging your circle tool. Draw a second perfect circle, much smaller than the first, and place it inside the bigger one.
Select both circles and in the align palette, select "align center" in both pulldown menus then hit the "align" button.
Select the blend tool, and create a blend between the two. In the object palette, change the number of steps to 80. Export this image as an eps, then open in photoshop. Open at 300 dpi, 3000 pixels.
Once opened, name your layer "vinyl", then create a new layer and move it underneath the vinyl layer. Resize canvas to 11 inches, leaving your image in the center. Select your bottom layer and fill with white.
Select the vinyl layer. Using the magic wand, select the area outside and inside of the circles, then invert the selection. Go to your filters palette and select Radial Blur. Set the blur to 75 and click ok.
With your selection still on, create a new layer. Fill selection with black, set layer to multiply, and opacity to 92%.
Keeping your selection, create another new layer. Create a radial gradient on the top corner of the image like so:
Duplicate layer and set to overlay. Create a copy of this layer. Then create another copy, which you will rotate 180 degrees. Create a copy of this layer and set the opacity to 15.
Make a small circular selection in the middle of the record. With the vinyl layer selected, hit command-x to cut the pixels from this layer.
make a new layer above the gradient layers. This will be for your track seperations. For this part of the record, you will make several different sized circle selections around the record and stroke them with black. After you have several concentric circles (not all the same size; try to vary the width of the spaces between circles), set your layer to exclusion.
Select your vinyl layer, and with the magic wand tool, select the area inside the record. Now go to your black layer, and while holding down the option key, select the middle again. You should now have a selection of the ring around the inside of the record. On a new layer, which should be at the very top of the other layers, fill your selection with black. Set the opacity to 72.
Now it's time to make the label in the center of the record.
Start by making a selection of the white area inside the record, and make it a few pixels wider than the white section. Making sure you're on the 'center ring' layer, hit command c to copy your selection. Now hit command n to open a new document the size of your selection. Make your document several pixels larger on each side and click okay to create the document. Hit command-v to paste your selection.
with the magic wand tool, select the outside of your circle. With the selection intact, you can go ahead and delete the circle layer, and add a new empty layer. Select inverse, then fill the selection with your label's background color.
using your guides, determine the center of the circle.
Now draw a small circle with your round selection tool, and delete the pixels in this area.
create a new layer and call it rings. make another circular selection, larger than the last, and give it a 2pt stroke of black. Draw another, still larger circle and give that a 2pt stroke as well. Give these circles a gaussian blur of 4. Adjust the opacity to 30.
open the image (supplied in the zip file at the end of this tutorial) record-layer.jpg. select all the pixels and copy, then paste into your record label document. Invert the image, and adjust the levels as shown.
Set this layer to screen. Set the opacity to around 40. If you'd like, you can duplicate the layer and rotate it, and move it around to your liking.
When your happy with the texture,command click on the label layer thumbnail to select the label. go to edit->copy merged, then open up your vinyl document and paste the selection. Center the label on top of the vinyl. (at this point, i realized my vinyl might be a little too wide in comparison to the label, so I cut around the edge of the vinyl. You can avoid this when making yours by making the center ring and label big enough to begin with).
Now all that's left to do is add whatever design you want to the label and you're done!
I'm including a zipped file with this tutorial that contains the layered psd (from photoshop cs2), and a flattened file that you can have to use as you wish (i don't mind how you use it, but a link back to me would be nice if you do use it in a project). Get the zip file here