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This tutorial came from our friends at www.photoshopuser.com.\
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Stained glass has been around for centuries, with the oldest surviving example from around the 7th century. With Photoshop's Brush tool, Paint bucket and a little Filter Gallery, we can create our own stained glass. \
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Step One:
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Open an image to trace for the window's subject\
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You will choose an image according to the instructions given in the classroom. We have used images of animals or plants in the past. Check with your teacher for which type of image to use.
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In this example I'm using a simple butterfly (image courtesy of PhotoSpin.com). These instructions are specifically for the butterfly image. Adjust the technique for your particular image. If the image has too much detail in it and is too complicated to trace, you may wish to simplify it by using image/adujust/ posterize to make it easier to trace.Simply copy the layer and apply the filter.
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If your layer has a lock on it, Double-click on the background layer's name in the Layers palette to make it a true layer, and name the layer. Reduce the layer's opacity to 50%. If 50% is too much then just change the opacity to suit your needs. Also, You may want to add a white layer under this layer in order to see it better.\
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Step Two:\
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Create a new layer above the Original (Layer > New > Layer), and name it Lead (stained glass uses lengths of lead to separate and hold together the glass). Trace the large areas of color in your image in black with a hard edged Paintbrush. Here we used the Hard Round 9 pixel brush.\
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Step Three:
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Draw the inside lead lines with the Hard Round 5 pixel. The trick to imitating the look of stained glass is to keep the design simple, and remember that you can't cut complex shapes with deep insets. The piece in yellow (above) is an impossible cut\'96 the diagram below it shows how to cut around a circle\
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Step Four:
If your animal is symetrical, the same on both sides, you may do the following to make your design perfect. If it is not symetrical, go to step six.
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When you've drawn the left side of the image, duplicate the Lead layer by hitting command-J (control-J). Flip the layer (Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal). Hold down the command key (control) to temporarily access the Move tool, and slide the flipped side to the right while holding down the Shift key as well. (Holding the Shift key down constrains the movement to 45, 90 or 180 degree angles.) \
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Step Five:
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Merge the two layers into one layer (command-E for Mac, control-E for PC). Select the Hard Round 9 pixel brush, and paint in the rest of the image. Turn off the visibility of the original image layers.\
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Step Six:
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Next, add a circle or a rectangle around the image, in the example we used a circle. If your design would look better with a rectangle or a square, use those shapes. Use the Elliptical Marquee tool, and hold the Shift key down while dragging out a circle. Move the circle (or rectangle) until the butterfly is smack dab in the middle. Stroke the circle with a 12 pixel inside black stroke (Edit > Stroke).
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Step Seven:
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With the Hard Round 5 pixel brush, paint in the intermediate lead lines. Remember to avoid impossible cuts, and keep the design fairly simple.
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Step 8:
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Next, add a new layer ( Layer > New > Layer), and name it Glass. Click and hold on the layer in the Layers palette, and drag it underneath the Lead layer.\
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Select the Paint Bucket tool (it may be hidden underneath the Gradient tool click and hold on the Gradient tool and choose the bucket from the menu). Set the Tolerance for 120, and turn Anti-alias, Contiguous and All Layers on in the options palette.\
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Step 9:
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Select a color, and fill in the glass with the Paint bucket. (Filling twice with the same color will eliminate any white outlines.) We used warm tones for the butterfly and cooler tones for the background. In your design, be sure to use different colors for the background in order to keep the design simple.\
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Step 10:
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Add a stained glass look with the Filter Gallery.\
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In Photoshop 7, Go to filter/ noise / add noise and then filter/ artistic/ plastic wrap. When you are finished add a layer style with bevel and emboss.
\ In Photoshop CS:\ With the Glass layer selected, go to Filter > Filter Gallery. The Grain filter adds a mottled look, and putting the Plastic Wrap on top gives it shine. (To add a filter in the Filter Gallery, tap on the page icon at the bottom of the Gallery window. You can select different filters with the drop-down menu.)\ \
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Step 11:
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Select the Lead layer, and add a three-dimensional look with the Bevel and Emboss layer style (Layer > Layer Style > Bevel and Emboss).\
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\ \ \ Stained Glass Two: A Variation
\ 1. Step One: Open your image and (as always to maintain your original) duplicate the background layer by pressing control J. We renamed the layer as Layer 1.( double click on the name to rename )\
\ Step Two: From the filter menu, choose blur> smart blur. In the dialog , change the opacity setting to high and mode to edge only. Then experiment with the Radius and Threshold settings until you see a fair amount of whitelines outlining your image, then click OK.\
\ Step Three: Press Ctrl I to invert the image, creating the black lines on a white background.\ \
\ Step Four: Now, in the next two steps, we'll try to make the lines a little less jagged and then thicker. From the filter menu, choose, blur< gaussian blur. Apply a blur of 2 to 3 pixels and click ok.\ \
\ Step Five: From the Image menu choose adjustment>threshold and in the dialog box, drag the slider to the right and make the lines thicker, then click ok.\ \
\ \ Varriations; Now it's time to try some different variations and hopefully create some "happy accidents" of your own. First try lowering the opacity of the top layer to let the original background show through. Or put the opacity for layer one back to 100% and change the blend mode from normal to other blend modes.\ \ \ \ \ \ }