Acorn is an awesome image editing program from Gus Mueller at Flying Meat. The reason that I like it so much is that it is simple to use, but is still very powerful. It has all of the features that I need to do everything that I would would do with Photoshop, and I don’t have to pay ridiculous amounts of money to buy it.

To show just how easy it is to use Acorn, I’m writing up a series of tutorials that will show how to do some of the common things that people do in Photoshop, but using Acorn.

The Product Fade Effect

The first effect that I’m going to walk you through is the product fade effect. Everyone loves the product fade effect. There’s just something about seeing a beautifully engineered product sitting on a reflective surface that just makes you want to buy it. Our goal is going to be to create this image:

Doesn’t that fade at the bottom of the image just make you want to go out and buy an iPhone?

So let’s see how you can create equally tantalizing product images.

Step 1 - Load the Product Image

First open Acorn and create a new Document [File->New or Command-N]

You can set your image dimensions to whatever you want. I always set mine a bit larger than I need and then crop it down to the right size later. It’s important that whatever you select for your background color is going to work with your product image. The product image that I’m using has a white background, so I set my document background image to white as well.

Once your document has been created, open your product image file [File->Open or Command-O].

Select the document with the product image and copy the image [Edit->Copy or Command-C] and then select your new document and paste in the product image [Edit->Paste or Command-V]. Acorn automatically puts the pasted image into its own layer.

Step 2 - Position the Product Image

Next we need to move the product image up towards the top. You may not need to do this depending on the size of your image. This is easily done using the Move tool.

Click on the product image to select its layer and then click the Move tool or press V.

Click and drag on the product to move it towards the top of the image. This will give you space at the bottom for the faded reflection.

Step 3 - Create the Reflection Image

Now we want to create the copy of the product image that we will use for the reflection. There are a couple of ways to do this, and how you do it will depend on what your product image looks like. My product image has a large white background that I don’t want my reflection to have. So I need a way to select my product image independent of its background. One easy method to do that is to use the Magic Selection tool. If your product image doesn’t have a background, you can skip this part.

Click on the product image to select its layer and then click the Magic Selection tool or press W.

The “Wand tolerance” setting tells Acorn how sensitive to color it needs to be in making the selection. The higher the number, the less sensitive the tool is to slight changes of color. Here I’ve set my “Wand tolerance” setting to 100. Your value will differ depending on how different your product image color is from its background.

Click on the background of the product image. The magic wand tool should select everything but your product, the little dancing dashes will tell you what you have selected. (Again you may need to experiment with the Wand tolerance setting. If your selection isn’t right and you want to try again, you can get rid of your selection using [Select->Clear Selection or Command-D]).

Now this is the exact opposite of what we want to select. We have selected everything but our product and what we want is to select only our product. So next we need to invert the selection [Select->Inverse or Command-Shift-I]. The astute reader may wonder why we didn’t just select the product in the first place. The reason is that most of the time your product image is on a solid background color. Selecting a solid background color can usually be done in a single step with the magic selection tool, whereas selecting the product directly usually takes multiple steps using one or more of the other selection tools. This takes a lot longer and can drive you insane.

Once we have the product selected we want to make a new layer with just our selection [Layer->New Layer With Selection or Command-J].

Step 4 - Position the Reflection Image

Now we want to move the reflection image into position. The first thing we do is flip it upside down. Select the reflection layer that you just created and then flip it vertically [Layer->Rotate->Flip Layer Vertical].

Now move your upside down product image down to directly underneath the original product image using the move tool. You want the two images to line up just right.

One way to insure that lay line up is to move the image using the arrow keys by clicking the image and pressing down down down… a zillion times until it is in just the right spot. A faster way to do this is to use the handy grid feature [Image->Toggle Grid or Command-'], (you can adjust the grid size in [Image->Grid Settings...]) which then makes it easier to line up the layer using the mouse.

Step 5 - Fade the Reflection

This is where the real power of Acorn comes into play, it’s use of filters. There are just a ton of filters that you can apply to your image. We’re only going to need one to create our product fade effect though.

Select you reflection layer (the upside down one) by clicking on it and create a Linear Gradient Filter [Filter->Gradient->Linear Gradient...]. The Apply Filters window appears with the Linear Gradient Filter set to its default settings. These settings will obviously need to be changed.

If you mouse over the image preview window you will see two orange points appear, these are the points that define how the gradient is spread out. The way the linear gradient filter works is by drawing an imaginary line between gradient point 1 and gradient point 2 that extends on to the ends of your image. Everything before point 1 it paints color 1. Everything after point 2 it paints color 2. Everything in between the the two points is a subtle gradient between color 1 and color 2.

To get our desired effect, we’re going to set color 2 to be completely transparent. To do this, move the little opacity slider next to Color 2 all the way to the left. This will cause the gradient between the two points to be a blend of color 1 (which I leave white here, you will want to set to be whatever your background color is) and transparent.

Next you need to move the gradient points into the right positions. Click and drag the points so that point 2 is right at the top of your reflection image and point 1 is directly under point 2 at the position where you want the fade to be complete. You can also use the text boxes on the right to enter the coordinates of the points directly.

When you have your points lined up just right, click “Apply” to see the final result.

Conclusion

So in just 5 steps using Acorn you were able to create your very own product fade image that you can use to entice thousands and thousands of buyers.