Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop are great tools for producing original designs. Here, I am going to create a shape in Illustrator and then use it as a clipping mask in Photoshop to make it partly hidden for using it nice background effect.
Step 1
To get the Ellipse tool in Illustrator, click and hold the Rectangle tool to see the other shapes. Now select the Ellipse tool from it.
Step 2
There are two ways to create an ellipse. From the shapes you can drag out the ellipse by holding the Shift key to maintain the right proportion. Or Select the Ellipse tool and click on the artboard and then enter the values as shown here. Change the Fill to black and Stroke to none.
Step 3
Using the Selection tool hold down the Option (PC: Alt). And now click and drag to create a copy of the circle. Make sure that you are holding the Shift key to keep the copy at a 90 degrees angle.
Step 4
Press Command-D (PC: Ctrl-D) to repeat the same action to create another circle. Repeat the process as many times to create a row as you see below.
Step 5
Select the whole row of circles using the Selection tool. By holding down the Option (PC: Alt), click and drag below the current row to create a duplicate row of circles. Repeat this until you get a box area of circles.
Step 6
You have to select the entire grid of circles and navigate to Edit>Copy. Choose an image you want to work on and go to Edit>Paste. ( PHOTO: http://sxc.hu/photo/1143262 )
Step 7
To place the clipboard contents press, Enter. Have a look at the figure below.
Step 8
To make the Background layer normal, double-click on the layer and name it. From the Layers palette you need to click and drag the new layer, which has a pasted shape, below the original layer. Now you will get two layers: one with the image and one with the pasted shape. Make sure that the pasted layer is below the image layer. Place the cursor between the two layers in the layer palette and hold down Option (PC: Alt). An icon in the form of a circle will appear. Click to make a clipping mask.
Step 9
The image has come out good. Let’s go a step further. From the layer path select the layer that has the shape. Select a soft-edged, large brush and paint black over an area where you would prefer to hide the circles. Now you see that the image is standing out from the rest of the image having a nice background.
