Written by Steve Patterson. In this Photoshop Effcts tutorial, we're going to learn how to create an interesting photo effect by taking an image and turning it into a series of interweaving strips. We'll be using a few layers and layer masks in the tutorial, as well as a couple of clipping masks and a layer style, and we'll be turning on Photoshop's grid to help us out.

The first time I saw this Photoshop effect, I thought "Wow, there's some really advanced stuff going on there!". But as with most things in life, after thinking about it for a few minutes, I realized just how simple it really is, as we'll see!

Here's the photo I'll be using for this tutorial. It's the same image I used in the Ghosting An Image tutorial but it works great with this effect as well:

And here's the same image after turning it into interweaving strips. Notice how the vertical and horizontal strips seem to alternate between going above and below each other (which is where the "interweaving" part comes from):

Let's get started!

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Step 1: Crop The Image Into A Square

The first thing we need to do for this effect is crop the image into a square, although technically you could leave the image as a 4x6 or whatever size it happens to be, but the effect tends to look best as a square, so let's crop it. We'll use Photoshop's Crop Tool for this, so select it from the Tools palette:

You could also press the letter C to quickly select it with the keyboard shortcut. Then, with the Crop Tool selected, hold down your Shift key and drag a selection around the person's face. Holding Shift tells Photoshop to constrain the selection to a perfect square:

Press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) when you're done dragging out the selection, and Photoshop goes ahead and crops the image into a square:

Step 2: Duplicate The Background Layer Twice

The next thing we're going to do is create a couple of copies of our image. If we look in the Layers palette, we can see that we currently have one layer which is named Background and it contains our original image (or at least, what's left of our original image now that we've cropped it). We need to duplicate the Background layer a couple of times, so use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac) to duplicate it once and then use the same keyboard shortcut again to create a second copy. You should see three layers now in your Layers palette. Double-click directly on the name of the layer on top and rename it "Vertical Strips", then double-click directly on the name of the layer below it and rename it "Horizontal Strips":

Step 3: Fill The Background Layer With Black

Press D on your keyboard to reset Photoshop's Foreground and Background colors to their defaults of black as the Foreground color and white as the Background color (yours may already be set the default colors). Then click on the original Background layer (the bottom layer) in the Layers palette to select it. We're going to fill it with black, and with black now as our Foreground color, we can use the keyboard shortcut Alt+Backspace (Win) / Option+Delete (Mac) which fills the currently selected layer with the current Foreground color (black). Nothing will seem to have happened to the image, since the two layers above the Background layer are blocking it from view, but if we look in the Layers palette, we can see that the Background layer's thumbnail is now filled with black, telling us that the layer itself is filled with black:

Step 4: Turn The Top Layer Off For Now

We're going to create our horizontal strips first, but the "Vertical Strips" layer on top is going to block our view so we need to temporarily turn it off. To do that, click on the layer visibility icon (the "eyeball" icon) to the left of the "Vertical Strips" layer in the Layers palette. You won't see anything happen to the image itself since the "Vertical Strips" and "Horizontal Strips" layers are identical at the moment, but when you click the eyeball icon, the eyeball will disappear, letting you know that the layer is now hidden:

Step 5: Turn On Photoshop's Grid

We're going to create our vertical and horizontal strips, and to help us out, we'll use Photoshop's grid. Go up to the View menu at the top of the screen, choose Show, and then choose Grid. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+' (Win) / Command+' (Mac) to easily turn the grid on and off. When your grid appears, if you find that you can't see it very well because the grid color is blending in with the colors of your image, press Ctrl+K (Win) / Command+K (Mac) to quickly bring up Photoshop's Preferences. Then, from the drop-down menu at the top, choose Guides, Grid and Slices. From here, we can change the color of the grid. In the Grid options, click on the color swatch in the top right corner, which will bring up Photoshop's Color Picker. Select a color for your grid that you'll be able to see in front of your image and then click OK to exit out of the Color Picker. You can see in the screenshot below of the Grid options that I've changed my grid color to yellow:

Click OK to exit out of the Preferences dialog box. You should now see your grid in your new color (in my case yellow) over top of your image:

Step 6: Drag Out A Series Of Horizontal Selections

Let's create our horizontal strips first. Grab your Rectangular Marquee Tool from the Tools palette, or press M on your keyboard to quickly select it:

Now let's use our grid to help us create our horizontal strips. First, make sure the "Horizontal Strips" layer is selected in the Layers palette (the currently selected layer is highlighted in blue). I'm going to create horizontal strips that are two grid rows high, with one grid row separating them from each other. Now, I want to make sure that the woman's eyes are included in the final effect, so I'm going to start by dragging out a selection around the two grid rows in front of her eyes. By default, my selection will snap to the grid as I'm dragging to make things easy. If you find that your selection is not snapping to the grid, go up to the View menu at the top of the screen, choose Snap To, and then choose Grid. You should see a checkmark to the left of the word "Grid".

Here's my selection around the two grid rows in front of her eyes:

This selection will become one of our horizontal strips. Now let's create the rest of them. Hold down your Shift key, which will tell Photoshop to add these next selections to our original selection, and drag out more horizontal selections, keeping each one two grid rows high and leaving one grid row separating each selection. Your image should look like this when you're done:

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Step 7: Add A Layer Mask

With our horizontal selections in place, click on the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette to add a layer mask to the "Horizontal Strips" layer:

Photoshop adds a mask to the layer and uses the selections we've created to determine which parts of the layer will remain visible and which parts will become hidden from view. The areas that were inside our horizontal selections remain visible, while the areas that were in the grid columns that separated our selections disappear, revealing the black-filled layer underneath:

I'm going to press Ctrl+'(Win) / Command+' (Mac) to temporarily hide my grid so we can see more clearly what's happened. We've now created our horizontal strips: