Posts Tagged ‘Deke’s Techniques’

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Deke’s Techniques: Making a model emerge from water in Photoshop

Published by | Tuesday, May 15th, 2012

This week’s Deke’s Techniques tutorial demonstrates how to take an otherwise land-locked model and make her appear to emerge from water. The key to this deceptively simple technique is to create a properly aligned, reflected version of the model’s image, that is based on a common smart object so that any changes to the original are reflected in the duplicate.

After you flip the duplicate upside down, your first step is to create a soft transition between the two images. In this video, Deke shows you how to set up a gradient transition in the intersection between the rightside-up and upside-down versions, so that no seams are visible between the two. Once you reduce the opacity of the reflection and add a water layer (adjusted to taste with a color overlay), you’ll arrive at the refreshing effect on the left below.

Girl reflected in water in Photoshop.

To make the properly wavy reflection on the right above, members of lynda.com can watch this week’s exclusive movie titled in which Deke shows you how to create a progressive ripple pattern that you can use for any Photoshop image.

See you back here next week when Deke will return with another versatile, reflective technique.

 

Interested in more?
• The entire Deke’s Techniques weekly series on lynda.com
• Courses by Deke McClelland on lynda.com
• All Photoshop courses on lynda.com

Suggested courses to watch next:
• Photoshop CS6 One-on-One: Fundamentals
• Photoshop Masking & Compositing: Fundamentals
• Photoshop CS6 Essential Training

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Deke’s Techniques: Reflecting type in water with Photoshop

Published by | Tuesday, May 1st, 2012

In this week’s free Deke’s Techniques movie, Deke shows you how to make a text reflection appear in rippled water. You’ll start with this miraculously floating text set on top of a photo of gently moving water:

Text reflection step one: text on image of water.

Next, Deke shows you how to create a base reflection by turning the text layer into a Smart Object, copying it, then using the Free Transform command to stretch the copy out and invert it. Then the real magic of this technique happens when Deke shows you how to create a displacement map from the water’s ripples, and how that map can be applied to the reflected letters. In order to ensure that the effect edges are smooth and believable, and that the letters get aligned correctly with the feet of the original text, you’ll need to pay close attention to the fairly sophisticated way Deke goes about building the displacement map in the free video. The end result is this study in serenity:

Photoshop text reflected in water.

For a real study in relaxed reflection, this week’s member-exclusive Deke’s Techniques movie, Reflecting water back into type, shows you how to represent the waves of the reflected letters inside their original source letters. Yes, it’s a reflection of a reflection:

Photoshop type with wave relfection expressed in letters.

See you back next week with another free technique from Deke!

 

Interested in more?
• The entire Deke’s Techniques weekly series on lynda.com
• Courses by Deke McClelland on lynda.com
• All Photoshop courses on lynda.com

Suggested courses to watch next:
• Photoshop CS5 One-on-One: Mastery
• Photoshop Masking & Compositing: Fundamentals
• Photoshop CS6 Beta Preview

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Deke’s Techniques: Rendering type in brushed metal with Photoshop

Published by | Tuesday, April 24th, 2012

This week’s free Deke’s Techniques falls into my favorite category of effects—those that create something from nothing. In this case, the ‘something’ is elegant, weighty letters that appear to be made of brushed stainless steel. The ‘nothing’ it takes to create this brushed metal effect starts with a window full of black pixels, and adds a couple of basic Photoshop filters, a few text and shape layers, some layer effects, and a couple of very important blend mode settings.

After transforming his window full of black pixels into a Smart Object, Deke starts by showing you how to create a pattern with noise and blur filters, and how to define your application of those filters as a pattern to be used later in the working document. Next, it’s a matter of applying a series of layer effects including variations on Drop Shadow, Gradient Overlay, Bevel & Emboss, and Pattern Overlay to your text and shapes that you would like to appear as brushed metal. Once you get these effects applied to one layer, you can Alt-drag (or Option-drag on a Mac) your effects to other layers to duplicate them, then tweak to taste.

Inspired by Sunday’s Adobe CS6 release, I decided to try this technique on my own:

Brushed metal text effect made in Photoshop.

Using the Photoshop CS6 public beta for my experiment, during the process I subconsciously stumbled upon one of the quietly awesome new features in CS6—the ability to apply styles to an entire layer group. Because it is the sixth Adobe Creative Suite, I decided to make six hexagonal shapes to serve as bolts in my composition. I wasn’t quite sure where I wanted them to go, so I left them each on separate layers and grouped the layers together. When it came time to apply the brushed metal effect, without thinking I just Option-dragged the layer effects onto the entire group, expecting it to apply to each layer. As you can see here in this view of the Layers panel, it was a success!

Applying styles to an entire layer group in the Photoshop CS6 Layers panel.

As I was doing this, it suddenly dawned on me that this kind of process used to be way more tedious. Adobe refers to updates like this improvement as Just Do Its, or, JDIs—I refer to them as ‘so convenient it always should have worked this way’ updates.

Meanwhile, if a brushed stainless steel effect isn’t to your taste, Deke also has an exclusive movie for members of lynda.com that discusses how to add a a brushed copper effect to your objects or shapes.

 

See you back next week with another free technique!

 

Interested in more?
• The entire Deke’s Techniques weekly series on lynda.com
• Courses by Deke McClelland on lynda.com
• All Photoshop courses on lynda.com

Suggested courses to watch next:
• Photoshop CS5 One-on-One: Mastery
• Photoshop for Designers: Layer Effects
• Photoshop CS6 Beta Preview

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Deke’s Techniques: Creating a smoke text effect

Published by | Tuesday, April 17th, 2012

In this week’s free Deke’s Techniques, you’ll see how to create text out of thin air—well—smokey thin air. Using a photograph of smoke and some editable text, Deke shows you how to make wispy, ethereal letters using a standard text layer and Smart Objects.

You’ll start by putting your white, soon-to-be smokey, text in front of a plain black background layer, and merging these two layers to make a Smart Object. Next, you’ll work on distorting the text with a smart version of the Wave filter and managing the Randomize setting (which means clicking it until you get something you like) to make your smoke seem properly transient.

Then it’s a matter of adding appropriate Motion Blur, applying the best blend mode (in this case Color Dodge), and finishing up with some more Gaussian blur. Because Color Dodge is one of those blend modes that responds to Fill Opacity better than standard layer opacity, you’ll also reduce the Fill Opacity. The result is this completely editable, ethereal effect:

Photoshop smoke text effect

If this effect seems familiar, it’s because you’ve probably seen it in action in the thumbnail graphic and introductory movie from Deke’s free Photoshop CS6 Beta Preview course (a living example of Deke using his effects in his own projects).

See you back next week with another free technique!

 

Interested in more?
• The entire Deke’s Techniques weekly series on lynda.com
• Courses by Deke McClelland on lynda.com
• All Photoshop courses on lynda.com

Suggested courses to watch next:
• Photoshop CS6 Beta Preview
• Photoshop CS5 One-on-One: Mastery
• Photoshop Blend Mode Magic
• Photoshop Masking & Compositing: Advanced Blending

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Posted in design | 3 Comments »

Deke’s Techniques: Creating a grass text effect in Photoshop

Published by | Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

This week’s Deke’s Techniques continues the celebration of Spring that began last week with an exercise in creating type out of freshly cut turf. In last week’s episode, Deke showed you how to create leafy letters by using a Photoshop type layer as a mask. In this week’s free video, you’ll see how Deke renders type in freshly cut grass. Like last week’s leafy letters, this technique begins by using a Photoshop text layer as a mask for a grassy green photograph, and leverages the power of Refine Mask to ensure that the letters have appropriately rendered edges that do justice to the grass hedges of our masked image.

This week Deke also goes a little further to show you the nuances of working with grass on dirt, which requires anticipating how to lift the appropriate shadow color from the dirt that underlies the turf. A grass effect is particularly sensitive to the Refine Edge command, meaning that the letters tend to run together in an unfortunate way. To avoid this, Deke shows you how to split the layer mask into two parts in order to make sure the letters retain their separation. As a final step, if you are working with turf, you naturally need to embed a perfectly landed golf ball into your image. With careful application of the shadow, you can really sell this effect, as seen here:

Words with grass effect created in Photoshop.

If you’re wondering why Photoshop looks so dark and elegant in this video tutorial, it’s because Deke has demonstrated the effect inside of the Photoshop CS6 public beta. For a limited time, you can download the application, free of charge, from Adobe Labs, and if you find yourself disoriented, you can also watch Deke’s entire Photoshop CS6 Beta Preview in the lynda.com library. The CS6 Beta Preview course has been unlocked and is free to everyone for a limited time during the beta cycle, so it’s a great time to try these techniques in the latest version of Photoshop.

See you back next week with another fresh technique from Deke!

 

Interested in more?
• The entire Deke’s Techniques weekly series on lynda.com
• Courses by Deke McClelland on lynda.com
• All Photoshop courses on lynda.com

Suggested courses to watch next:
• Photoshop CS5 One-on-One: Mastery
• Photoshop for Designers: Layer Effects
• Photoshop Masking & Compositing: Fundamentals
• Photoshop CS6 Beta Preview

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Deke’s Techniques: Creating leafy letters in Photoshop

Published by | Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012

In this week’s free Deke’s Techniques video, Deke turns ordinary text into…a shrubbery! This relatively simple technique combines a text layer and a leafy photo to make letters that appear to be made from foliage.

Deke begins by creating a mask using the standard Myriad Pro text. Then, using the Refine Mask command (in Photoshop CS5 or later—later meaning Photoshop CS6 beta), he renders his text to have a realistic, botanical effect. The refinement supplied by the Refine Mask feature allows the leaves to gracefully manifest around the letter edges, providing some transparency and detail. He follows up this relatively simple procedure with some key layer effects (Drop Shadow and Inner Glow) and voila, leafy letters! It’s a quick, easy technique that has an abundance of potential uses.

It’s good to keep in mind that you don’t have to use text for your mask—really, any shape outline will do.

If you’d like to go full topiary, Deke also has a member-exclusive tutorial this week called Creating topiary type, where he explains how to create the full grown from the ground look. All you need is a photo featuring some nicely textured plant life, and your Photoshop garden can grow to whatever shape you desire. Since Deke is lounging in Hawaii this week, I decided to use this technique to create the tropical topiary you see below. Applying the technique to a different set of files only required a few adjustments in the Refine Edge panel and a slightly different green for the Inner Glow layer style.

Example of topiary type created in Photoshop

Deke will return from his island sojourn with another free technique next week.

Interested in more?
• The entire Deke’s Techniques weekly series on lynda.com
• Courses by Deke McClelland on lynda.com
• All Photoshop courses on lynda.com

Suggested courses to watch next:
• Photoshop CS5 One-on-One: Mastery
• Photoshop for Designers: Layer Effects
• Photoshop Masking & Compositing: Fundamentals
• Photoshop CS6 Beta Preview

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Deke’s Techniques: Creating a Star Wars–style hologram effect in Photoshop

Published by | Tuesday, March 27th, 2012

In this week’s free technique, Deke uses a variety of Photoshop effects to turn a couple of unsuspecting rental car agents from this world into rental car agents from a galaxy far, far away. The eerie Star Wars hologram effect made famous by Princess Leia can work nicely on everyday substantive earthlings with the right combination of a custom pattern, a Displacement Map, and some choice layer effects. Imagine if your next rental car included the two regular people (on left) waiting virtually (on right) to acclimate you to the cool, but unfamiliar, controls of your strange vehicle.

People with Star Wars hologram effect applied in Photoshop.

The effect starts by saturating an ordinary pair of humans with some old-school, horizontal TV static via the application of a simple custom pattern (Deke shows you how to make the pattern in the free video). Then the shadows of the humans are given faux-holographic substance via the application of a Displacement Map. To finish the effect, Deke applies a few layer effects and shows you how to customize your holograph based on whether it’ll appear digitally or in print.

On the note of cool but unfamiliar controls, you may notice that in this week’s Deke’s Techniques movie Deke is using the new dark user-interface brought to you by Photoshop CS6. While Deke’s technique will work just fine in CS5, if you’d like to try Photoshop CS6 and experience the dark interface for yourself, you can download the free Photoshop CS6 public beta for a limited time from Adobe Labs. After you have the CS6 beta, if you’d like to hear more about how it works, lynda.com has made Deke’s Photoshop CS6 Beta Preview course free to everyone for a limited time as well.

 

Now that you have the power to hologram yourself into any setting with Photoshop, where will you go first?

 

Interested in more?
• The entire Deke’s Techniques weekly series on lynda.com
• Courses by Deke McClelland on lynda.com
• All Photoshop courses on lynda.com

Suggested courses to watch next:
• Photoshop CS5 One-on-One: Mastery
• Photoshop for Designers: Layer Effects
• Photoshop Masking & Compositing: Fundamentals
• Photoshop CS6 Beta Preview

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Deke’s Techniques: Creating a railroad track in Illustrator

Published by | Tuesday, March 20th, 2012

In this week’s free video, Deke shows you how to create train tracks in Illustrator—and not your simple Thomas the Tank Engine tracks—but real honest-to-goodness wooden ties with shiny rails. The basics of this technique involve using nothing more than a total of 19 strokes heaped into a single path outline, and the rest is just a series of colors and numerical settings applied from the Appearance panel.

The key is leveraging Illustrator’s ability to apply a multitude of attributes to a single path and carefully offsetting them so that you create the shadows and highlights that really sell the effect. The result is this authentic railroad track that will make any train nerd proud.

Just so you have an adequate appreciation of what’s going on, here’s your everyday-average Illustrator train track effect (made with just 3 strokes):

Illustrator train track effect

And here’s Deke’s subtly more sophisticated railroad effect (made with 19 strokes):

Illustrator train tracks, option two with 19 strokes

If you’re not a straight-and-narrow (gauge) type of artist, Deke also has an exclusive movie for lynda.com members this week called Bending the railroad track around curves, in which he shows you an alternative technique that allows you to create curvy tracks.

 

Interested in more?
• The entire  Deke’s Techniques weekly series on lynda.com
• All Illustrator courses on lynda.com
• All Design courses on lynda.com
• All courses by Deke McClelland on lynda.com

Suggested courses to watch next:
• Up and Running with Illustrator

• Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Advanced

• Illustrator Insider Training: Rethinking the Essentials

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Deke’s Techniques: Creating synthetic lightning in Photoshop

Published by | Tuesday, March 13th, 2012

It’s time to upgrade your Photoshop weather machine with this week’s free technique from Deke. Back in November, Deke showed you how to create a synthetic rainbow entirely out of Photoshop magic. In this week’s free tutorial, Deke shows you how to intensify your dark and stormy scenes by adding a 100-percent artificial, but no less striking bolt of Photoshop-based lightning.

Start by simply painting in a black lightning-shaped brush stroke. Then, by ingeniously selecting parts of your bolt, you’ll apply the Difference Clouds filter to randomize the edges, and an unusual Levels command setting to convert that blobby line into a tendril of light. Then, with some carefully applied Blend modes, some Gradient masks, and a hint of brushed-in contact spots for eerie glow, you’ll finish up your truly believable lightning effect.

Creating lightning in Photoshop

The entire procedure takes some concentration and diligence, but in the end you’ll be rewarded with a flash of creative control, and ready to illuminate any scene with this high-impact effect.

And if that doesn’t satisfy your desire to control the elements, Deke’s got an exclusive members-only movie this week called Creating a driving rain effect in Photoshop, in which he, you guessed it, shows you how to create driving rain.

Photoshop weather at your fingertips, all courtesy of your benevolent meteorologist Deke.

See you back next week with another free technique from Deke!

 

Interested in more?
• The entire Deke’s Techniques collection on lynda.com (updated weekly)
• Courses by Deke McClelland on lynda.com
• All Photoshop courses on lynda.com

Suggested courses to watch next:
• Photoshop CS5 One-on-One: Mastery
• Photoshop for Designers: Layer Effects
• Photoshop Masking & Compositing: Fundamentals

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Deke’s Techniques: Drawing a highly graphic text explosion in Illustrator

Published by | Tuesday, February 28th, 2012

Rumor has it that next month Adobe Illustrator will turn 25 years old. To celebrate, Deke offers a free technique this week that uses Illustrator to make its own graphic celebratory explosion. You’ll start with some ordinary text, set in an ordinary font, and then you will attach eye-catching stroke effects around it, using a variety of commands from Illustrator’s Effect menu (including a bit of Transform goodness, some offset paths, and the delightfully named Pucker and Bloat commands). After that, Deke shows you how to fill the text and create a series of strokes to form an outline.

Illustrator text with eye-catching stroke effects

Eventually, you can save the whole slew of effects (accumulated in the Appearance panel) as a graphic style to be reused in the second phase of the technique.

To make the “explosion” part of the graphic, you’ll start with a single line segment emanating from the center of the drawing. Next, Deke shows you a super secret way to create a random cacophony of duplicate lines. (OK, it’s all about holding down the tilde key [~], but it’s quick and cool.) Now, you can apply the graphic style you’ve created from the text, turn off some of the options in the Appearance panel, change the fill color, and speedily create a complementary (and no less explosive) effect for the burst of lines. The results explosively speak for themselves. Meanwhile the text is editable, so you can update your center message at will (or depending on the age of your subject). Happy graphic explosion birthday, Illustrator! You’ve earned it.

Adobe Illustrator text with explosive line effect

Deke will be back next week with another free technique (and a couple of exclusive variations exclusively for lynda.com members.)


Interested in more?
• the entire collection of Deke’s Techniques on lynda.com
• All Illustrator courses on lynda.com
• All Design courses on lynda.com
• All courses by Deke McClelland on lynda.com

Suggested courses to watch next:
• Up and Running with Illustrator
• Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Advanced
• Illustrator CS5 Essential Training
• Illustrator Insider Training: Rethinking the Essentials

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