A great effect for any project is adding gears, I made mine with a rusty steel effect but you could always do it plastic or wood.


Create a new image,t his one is 200×200 @ 72 dpi. The first thing that we need to do is set up some guide lines.
In the picture on the left you can see how they need to be set up.
The co-ordinates are:
top to bottom: 30 – 100 – 170
left to right: 90 – 95 – 100 – 105 – 110

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Create a new layer, and using the polygonal lasso tool draw the following shape. Make sure your snap to guides is turned on. View>Snap To Guides. Fill it with black.

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Deselect the marquee, and hide your guides. The shape you have should look like what I have on the left.

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Now duplicate the layer and go Edit>Free Transform <ctrl+i>. Hold your shift key down and rotate it 2 notches.
By holding your shift key down photoshop will only allow you to rotate things in 15 degree
increments. I call each 15 degrees a notch =)

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Repeat step 4 until your image looks like the one on the left. Always duplicate the first layer you made. It helps to ensure accuracy.

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Your layers should look something like mine on the left.

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Create a new layer, and use the circle marquee tool to draw a circle. Make sure it is centered by using the guides.Fill the circle with black.

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Keep the circle selected, and hold down the ctrl + shift key, and then click on each of the other layers to select them as well.
Your final marquee should be like the one on the left.

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Create a new layer, and make all the other ones invisible.
Now go to Select>Modify>Smooth and enter a value of 3.
Your marque should be slightly rounded now.

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Fill with black, deselect, and you have something like what I have to the left.

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Create another circle marquee, again making sure that it
is centered, and hit delete.You now have the basic cog. By playing around with textures and different sizes you should be able to make any kind of gear you need.

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By playing around with textures and different sizes you should be able to make any kind of gear you need.I finished this cog by punching holes all around it and then gave it a metal texture with a bit of rust. I also added depth by giving it a hard shadow.

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The image below was made with this same technique, but on a larger scale.
I started with an image twice the size, made smaller spokes,
and when everything was done, I reduced it by 50%.

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