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You know me- I love styles.
Unfortunately I talk about them so much these days that it may
seem I rely on them for nearly everything, but that isn't the
case at all. Believe it or not, I do delve into channels for
some effects, and to be truthful Channels still offer greater
control when trying to pull that extra something out of a
reflection or a bevel.
Let's take a look at using channels to help with
an effect. Here we go!
To begin with, create a new image and enter some
type or drop a shape on it's own layer.
Command/CTRL+Click the layer to create a
selection. Go to the Channels Palette and create a new Alpha
Channel. Fill the selection with White, then duplicate the Alpha
Channel.
If you were to apply Lighting Effects using one
of these Alpha Channels, you would get a smidge of depth and
lighting, but it doesn't really make the type/shape stand out
from the page.
I'm going to show you a couple trick that people
use for beveling with channels.
In the Channels Palette, select the Alpha 1 Copy
channel. Make sure your selection is active. We are going to
start blurring the contents of our selection in varying degrees.
Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Start with a
setting of 15 (maybe less depending on the size of your
selection). The point is to blur the edges of the selection
while gradually getting lighter toward the center.
Repeat the blur 3 more times, with gradually
decreasing blur settings: 9, 4, and 2.
Deselect the type/shape, and Gausian Blur once
more with a setting of .5.
Now when you apply Lighting Effects to your
layer, you actually get some depth:
Let's re-apply lighting effects to the same
layer, only this time from a different angle with alternate
colors:
Now lets work on some reflections. Go back to
your alpha 1 channel and again make your shape selection active.
Create a new channel and move your selection to the right 10 and
down 10. Fill it with white. Again, move the selection down and
to the right, this time by 5 each. Fill the selection with
black.
Go to Filter>Gaussian Blur, and apply a setting
of 2.
Bring up your Levels (Command>CTRL+L) and move
the sliders together until you get a nice, well defined but
rounded effect:
Command+CTRL+Click the Channel to bring up the
selection for the highlights. Go back to the Layers Palette,
create a new layer, and feather your selection by 1. You may
need to reposition the selection to better match the shape
position. Fill the Selection with White, set the layer mode to
Overlay, and duplicate the layer.
This gives a pretty solid foundation to build
on. Now when we play with the layer styles, we get an effect
that is much richer than if we had used styles solo.
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