How to Draw Interlocking Rings in Photoshop

In this tutorial I'll show you how you can draw interlocking rings in Adobe Photoshop. It's easy to assume that this is actually very straight forward, but it's a little deceptive as each ring has to both pass in front of and behind the other ring that it links with.

A well-known example of this effect is the logo of the International Olympic Committee, which is made up of five different colored interlocking rings.

We're going to use just three rings aligned side by side, but the technique is the same and you can easily expand it if you want to work with more rings.

This is quite an easy tutorial that is suitable for beginners and it will introduce Photoshop's align and distribution features, as well as selection modes.

Create a Ring

Launch Photoshop and then open a blank document by going to File > New and set the size as desired, depending on how large you need your rings.

Now add a new layer to the file by going to Layer > New > Layer or clicking on the Create a new layer button at the bottom of the Layers palette. We're going to use this layer to draw our first ring.

Select the Elliptical Marquee tool from the Tools palette and then, with the Shift key held down to constrain the tool to drawing a perfect circle, click and drag on the blank page to draw a circular selection.

To make this into a ring, go to Edit > Stroke and in the Stroke dialog set a suitable Width value. This will vary, depending on the size of your file and how thick you want your rings to be, but you can always go to Edit > Undo after applying a stroke and then try again with a different width. For reference, I set mine to 70 px and I'm working on an A4 sized page.

You also need to set the desired color of the ring. Just click on the box next to the Color label and use the color picker to choose your color. When you're happy, click OK on the Select stroke color dialog and then the Stroke dialog. Go to Select > Deselect to get rid of the selection.

This will have given you a single ring and in the next step, you'll duplicate and re-color it.

Duplicate and Re-color Your Ring

To copy the ring, we just need to duplicate the layer that it was drawn on. Ensure that the ring layer is the active layer by clicking on it in the Layers palette to ensure that it's highlighted and then go to Layer > Duplicate Layer and click OK in the dialog that opens.

If you change to the Move tool, the first tool in the Tools palette, and then click and drag on the document, you'll see that you're moving a copy of the ring.

We need this ring to be a different color, so click on the Foreground color box at the bottom of the Tools palette and set your desired color with the color picker – I chose a shade of bright green. Then click on the Lock transparent pixels button in the Layers palette, before going to Edit > Fill and setting the Use drop down menu to Foreground Color before clicking OK. This changes the color of the ring without affecting the rest of the layer.

You now need to repeat this step to create a third ring in a different color again, before moving on to align and distribute the rings.

Now we can adjust the alignment and distribution of the rings. First position the rings roughly so that the center ring overlays the left ring and the right ring overlays the center ring.

Click on one of the ring layers in the Layers palette and then hold down the Ctrl key and click on the other two ring layers. You should see that all three layers are now highlighted meaning that they're all selected.

With the Move tool active, in the tool options bar, you should see that there are a number of icons that allow you to automatically align and space items on different layers.

First click on the Align top edges button and then the Distribute horizontal centers button – hold your cursor over a button to see a tooltip show the name. You should now see that the rings have been perfectly aligned and evenly distributed.

Next we can create the interlocking effect.

This last step will use the Magic Wand tool to create small selections that correspond to the point where the rings overlap, making use of several different selection modes to achieve this.

First click on the Magic Wand tool in the Tools palette and in the tool options bar, set the Tolerance input to a relatively high value – I set it to 70. Towards the left of the tool options bar are four buttons that set the selection mode.

Check that the first of these, New selection, is active and also ensure that the Contiguous box is ticked and the Sample All Layers box isn't.

Now click on the bottom ring layer in the Layers palette, which should be the left hand ring, so that it is active and then click on the left hand ring in the document with the Magic Wand tool. Next, in the Layers palette, click on the center ring layer to make it active and change the selection mode to Intersect with selection by clicking the fourth of the mode buttons, before clicking on the center ring. If you hover your cursor over each icon for a second or so, you'll see a tooltip that shows the name of the mode.

You should now see that there are two small selections active that encompass the two areas where the rings cross. Switch the selection mode to Subtract from selection, the third button, and click on the lower of the two selections. That leaves you with one small selection still active and if you press the Delete key on your keyboard, you'll see that the left hand ring now appears to pass over the top of the middle ring at that point.

Go to Select > Deselect to remove the selection.

To complete the effect, you need to carry out the same steps on the middle and right hand rings so that all three rings now appear to interlock with each other, forming a chain.

Other Interlocking Ring Tutorials:

• Interlocking Rings with Inkscape
• Interlocking Rings with Xara Xtreme
• Interlocking Rings with Adobe Illustrator
• Interlocking Rings with CorelDraw 8
• Interlocking Rings with CorelDraw 9