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This is a fun week, so let's
do something fun. Rather than give you any productivity advice,
I'll give you a little project that will make you smile.
We are going to learn how to
create pipes and then blend them together. In other words we are
going to be building a pipe with another pipe sticking out of it
as if it had been molded as one unit.
First thing to do is to open
a new document. I made mine 250 x 250 pixels. Make the
background black. Then using your rectangle marquee tool, draw a
rectangle about like I have it here.
Now grab your gradient tool with white as the
foreground color and black as the background color. Create a new
layer. On the new layer and using the reflective gradient
option, swipe a gradient from just above center down to just
past the bottom. Then deselect it.
Now grab your rectangle marquee tool again and
draw another rectangle, this time vertically oriented. Don't
deselect it. Grab the circle marquee tool. While holding the
Shift key, which adds to the selection, draw an oval shape from
the left side of the rectangular selection you just made down a
little past the bottom of the rectangle selection. What you will
get is one complete selection that is long, square on one side
and rounded on the other.
Now create a new layer on top of the other pipe
layer. Get your gradient tool back out of the toolbox and swipe
a gradient starting just to the left of center in the selection
going right just outside the selection. Deselect it now.
Now using the Move tool, adjust the position of
the upper pipe so that the top of the curve lands just on the
upper edge of the main lower, horizontally-oriented pipe. See my
image for help.
Once you have it just right, merge the upper
pipe layer with the lower pipe layer. The quick key for that is
Command + E.
Now comes the fun part. Grab the Blur tool out
of the toolbox. It looks like a little drop of water. Use 100%
pressure and normal mode in the options palette. I used about a
10 pixel brush size with 0% hardness selected. Carefully brush
across the bottom of the upper pipe going from side to side.
Quick little clicks are best. Don't go to crazy. A few little
dabs at the edges will do the trick. See the next image to tell
what area I am talking about.
Once you are done, your image should look
something like this:
That was fun! Now play around a bit and have fun. |