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Whew... finally! I've been working on the
members area of Action Fx, and we completed the upload this
weekend. If you haven't been by for awhile, be sure to check it
out. Between the free and members area we are at over 4000
addons to Photoshop. If you already have the downloads, don't
fret... I have plenty more on the way!
As any prospective guru on Photoshop will
quickly realize, our world is one of contrasts. If you paid any
attention to the news last year, you would have seen what
appeared to be the Great Northwest in flames. Unfortunately
those fires were in the forests surrounding my home. Talk about
second hand smoke! This July seems to have done a total back
flip, as I watch the rain soak my lonely BBQ and my fishing gear
pines away solemnly in the corner waiting for some attention as
record-breaking trout taunt me in my sleep.
Needless to say this gives me time for my other
hobby, which would be Photoshop. This week we are going to take
the inspiration I'm getting from the deluge hitting my window
and turn it into type that drips off the monitor. So with
umbrella in hand, let's get started!
Let's set up the image:
Width= 9 in
Height= 5 in
150 dpi
RGB
Background= White
Create a new layer and enter your type with the
type mask tool. I'm using a large font set to 130 pts called
Flat Iron. I found it on a free font site online... that is
where most of my fonts come from, and if you enjoy typography
there are some great ones available with a little searching.
Fill the selection with black and duplicate the layer.
We are going to work with channels a bit for
this one, so if they make you nervous have no fear. We'll take
it nice and easy!
Select your channels pallete. Duplicate the
green channel by dragging and dropping it to the new channel
icon. Deselect your text and invert the color, so your type is
now white on a black background. Rename this channel to 'shape'
or something you will remember later.
Run a gausian blur on this channel set to 14:
Hit Command/Control+L to bring up the levels.
Move the sliders closer together until you have your type with
the corners rounded off.
Go back to your layers, selecting the top layer,
or the duplicate of the type layer. Go to Select>Load Selection
and choose shape from the menu (or whatever you names your
channel as). Create a new layer, and fil this with the radial
gradient, upper left to lower right, white to green.
Drop the layer opacity to 92%, so you can just
see the type beneath it.
Looks kind of ugly yet, huh? We'll fix that.
First, go back to the channels. Duplicate the shape layer, and
offset the selection down 8 pixels and to the right 8 pixels.
Fill the selection with black, deselect, apply a gaussian blur
0f 4 and again round it off with the levels. Name this channel
'reflections'. Create a new top layer, go to Load Selection and
choose this channel. You may need to contract the selection a
bit so it doesn't go outside the bounds of our gradient fill.
Fill the selection with white.
Now apply a bevel:
...and an Inner Glow:
We are going to work on the type below now, so
save these settings as a layer style. I'm naming my slimey.
Make a selection of the slime layer and invert
the selection. On the other 2 type layers delete the selection
so the corners match the slime layer. Apply your new Layer Style
to these layers... actually we only need one, so you can discard
the other layer entirely.
Apply Slimey to the lower type layer. Select the
Liquify tool and make some 'drips' along the bottom of your
type.
We need to tweak the layer style a bit. Add a
drop shadow, a dark green inner glow, a lighter green color
overlay, and another bevel:
Drop your layer opacity to 80.
Here's my image:
Now try applying some backgrounds and
highlights. You can do this at your leisure... say, with the
paintbrush tool, etc.
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