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8/3/2019 PhotoShop Letters

1/7Chapter 2Type Effects

ISTOCKPHOTO/CAJOER

Con

chapter2

STEP ONE:

Go under the File menu, choose N

and create a new document measu

12 inches wide by 7 inches tall at 10

Then, select the Horizontal Type

(T) from the Toolbox and click on

canvas to create a text layer. For

effect, its better to use a thick b

fontthinner fonts wont revealeffect as much. Here, Ive typed t

word iMAGiNE in Helvetica Bla

and centered it in the canvas are

STEP TWO:

Open the file of the swirly graphic.

one I found over on iStockphotos w

site (www.istockphoto.com). To get

shape into our layout, we need to

extract it from its background. So,

the Channels panel (Window>Chan

press-and-hold the Command (PC

key, and click on the RGB channel

will load the luminosity of the ima

a selection. Since the image is str

black and white, it will select all owhite area, but we need the grap

selected, so go under the Select me

and choose Inverse.

Asadesigner, theres just noescapingtheubiquit

yof swirls as a designelement. Theyre just oneo

fthose things

thatneverseemstogo outofstyle. Somedesigne

rsliketocreate their ownswirls,and some liketo

justfindthem

elsewhere and usethose. I likedoing both, butin

thisproject,welltake alookatusingastockim

ageofaswirl

graphic and thedifferent wayswecan implemen

t itintoour designs.

Ah,ThoseDarnSwirls!
http://www.istockphoto.com/http://www.istockphoto.com/


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52 Chapter 2 Type Effects

STEP THREE:

Go to the bottom of the Layers panel

and click on the Create a New Layer icon

to create a new blank layer. PressShift-

Delete (PC: Shift-Backspace) to open

the Fill dialog, choose White from theUse pop-up menu, and click OK. Now

we have a white version of the original

swirly shape. Press Command-D (PC:

Ctrl-D) to Deselect.

STEP FOUR:

Use the Move tool (V) to drag-and-drop

this shape onto the document with thetext. Press Command-T (PC: Ctrl-T) to

enter Free Transform, press-and-hold the

Shift key to keep it proportional, and

scale the shape to fit on the canvas area.

Also, make sure this layer is above the

text layer in the Layers panel. Change

the layers blend mode to Difference

and this will invert the colors over the

background elementskeeping the

swirly shape white in the areas over the

text, and black over the background

area, even though the shape is stillwhite. Press Return (PC: Enter) to

lock in your transformation.


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Chapter 2Type Effects

Con

STEP FIVE:

Now lets add the swirly shape in

the text, but it wont look all that g

on straight black text. Some layer

effects could work here, so click

on the text layer in the Layers panmake it active, then click on the A

Layer Style icon at the bottom of

panel and choose Gradient Overl

Use the default Linear style with

Black, White gradient (choose it in

Gradient thumbnails Gradient Pick

but drop the Opacity down to 50%

change the angle to 40. Next, click

Stroke on the left to turn it on, a

set the Size to 2 px and the position

Inside. Then, click on the Color sw

set the color to black, and then cOK in the Color Picker, and again

the Layer Style dialog.


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STEP SIX:

Click back on the swirly shape layer (the

top layer) and press Command-J (PC:

Ctrl-J) to make a duplicate of it. Change

the blend mode back to Normal and

then move this layer down just abovethe text layer in the Layers panel. Press-

and-hold the Option (PC: Alt) key and

click in between this layer and the text

layer below to create a clipping mask.

This will make the duplicate shape vis-

ible only inside the text area. Go into

Free Transform mode, then press-and-

hold the Shift key, and scale the shape

down, so more of it can be seen in the

text. Click inside the bounding box and

drag it to reposition it wherever it looks

best, and then press Return to lock inyour transformation.

STEP SEVEN:

If youd like, you can make another du-plicate of the original Difference layer,

then scale it down and reposition it to

add more swirls.


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Con

STEP EIGHT:

Now, you may be wondering wha

you can do with it at this point. Y

certainly have many options, but h

one to consider: With the top-m

layer selected in the Layers panel, con the Create New Adjustment La

icon at the bottom of the panel a

choose Invert. This will make th

text and swirls white and gray, wh

making the background area blac

This allows us to make a selectio

of the entire graphic from within t

Channels panel without having to

flatten the file.

STEP NINE:

Just like we did back in Step Two, the Channels panel, click on the R

channel to make it active (along wi

the others below it), then press-an

hold the Command (PC: Ctrl) key,

and click on the RGB channel to

load the selection.


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STEP 10:

Create a new layer in the Layers panel,

then click on the Foreground color

swatch, pick a dark purple color, and

press Option-Delete (PC: Alt-Back-

space) to fill the selection with thenew color. Now you can take this top

layer and drop it into any layout in

any color you want. Be sure to save

this file as a layered document, so you

can modify and create new versions

of the graphic in no time!

TIP: Turn It into a Brush

You can also turn this graphic into a

brush. Just skip the Invert adjustment

layer step (Step Eight) and, instead,

create a merged copy of all the visiblelayers by pressing Command-Option-

Shift-E (PC: Ctrl-Alt-Shift-E). Then,

go under the Edit menu and choose

Define Brush Preset. Now you can

play around with some of the brush

effects we saw in Chapter 1 to get

some really interesting effects.


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Final Image

In this alternate version, I changed the Stroke layer styles color and changed the Gradient Overlay layer style to Radial.I also added a texture over the background and masked part of it out, then positioned a swirl in the background, belowthe text, but above the main swirl. Finally, I added a blue Hue/Saturation adjustment layer on top.

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