Here's how you make a realistic wooden baseball bat completely from scratch. This is a longer tutorial but very worth the time to do.

Step 1

First, draw your bat shape.

Note: ReyRey used Illustrator to make the bat shape but another member wrote in a method to create a bat shape using Photoshop:

BTW, to get a baseball bat shape in Photoshop I set a vertical guide, drew a path that looked like a bat cut in half, duplicated the path, flipped the duplicated path horizontally, moved the path back to center. From there I CTRL-Click'd on both paths to create a selection and filled it with black.

Step 2

Then create a gradient to give your bat color and shape.

Step 3

On a new layer, Create a rectangle selection over your bat and drag the gradient over it.

Step 4

Now with warp tool or liquify bend the gradient layer to the shape of the bat. Drop the transparency of the layer so you can see the shape of the bat below.

Step 5

Hit enter and now link the gradient layer to the bat shape layer.

Step 6

Next make a selection at the top of the bat and airbrush a shadow across the top of the bat like this.

Step 7

Now , create file of the same dimensions and rotate it 90 degrees. Now draw a path with the pen tool while holsing down the shift key. This will make a straight line. Choose a soft brush and a good color for your wood grain. Now go to the paths pallet pull down menu and pick "Stroke Path". This will draw a nice straight soft line across the page.

Repeat this process a few times making the brush smaller each time and separate the lines at different distances. Mix it up a bit to keep it looking natural.

Step 8

Now go to Filter/Distort/ Polar coordinates and apply these settings.

Step 9

Now go to stylize/ Wind

Step 10

Now with the warp tool, distort the image like this.

Step 11

Now with a large soft smudge brush set to about 50, smudge the image up a bit to make it look natural.

Step 12

Now drag this image over to the bat image and transform it with the warp tool to fit the bat.

Step 13

You can now link this layer to the others. Set it to multiply and drop the opacity a bit.

Step 14

Now create a new layer. Fill it with black. Now go to "Filter"? "Noise" and drag the setting all the way.

Step 15

Add a motion blur to the layer. Set the layer to soft light and link it to the others. Drop the opacity if needed.

Step 16

On this layer you may want to make a selection at the top of the bat and warp the shape of the grain so it folows the shape of the bat.

Step 17

Now on a new layer, create a logo. Fill it with a dark brown. Set it to multiply and add a bevel and emboss and an inner shadow like this.

Step 18

Now add a highlight and some final touches and there you have it. You can stop here or continue on to "age" the bat.

Step 19

If your bat is too nice, you can mess it up a bit. Find a grungy texture online or photograph your own. Drag it over your bat. Neutralize the layer and set it to multiply or soft light. Drop the opacity if needed. Link it to the other layers.

I got this one from Mayang.com. They've got great textures.

Step 20

Now you can add some nicks to it. Create another layer and with a sharp brush draw some shapes for the nicks. Now drop the "fill" to zero and add a bevel and emboss to the shapes.

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