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Well, it's just about time to fly outta here for
the big city. Photoshop World 2001 kicks off on friday night,
and the excitement of being there almost (ALMOST) pushes my
aversion of flying to the back of my cranium. You guessed it...
I'm allergic to airplanes.
This week I'm going to remain in the same vein I
opened a long time ago. From the feedback I'm receiving this
little column has been quite helpful to a lot of you, and I
appreciate every email!
I've been getting a lot of requests about how to
apply the effects in the iMac button action on my website
(here's the link:
http://actionfx.com/index2.shtml : Scroll down on the first
page to find the download) to text or other shapes. I'm going to
try to do this here this week, but I'd also direct you to an
issue of Mac Today.
Felix Nelson of NAPP has an excellent tutorial on this effect
applied to text. Not only does he know his stuff, but he's a
heck of a nice guy to boot.
Ok, on with the effect!
To begin with, create a new image with a
transparent background. Then create a new layer. My image for
this tutorial has the following states:
9 inches wide
5 inches high
150 dpi
Transparent Background
RGB
Select the type mask tool. In the new layer
enter your type.
Now choose 2 shades of blue, red, orange or
whatever color you like for the foreground and background
colors. Make sure one is lighter than the other, and place the
lighter color in the background. I'm going with orange here.
Select the Linear Gradient tool. Fill the
selection from top to bottom.
Here's where I am thus far:
Set this layer's opacity to 50%, then duplicate
it.
Create a new layer, and contract your selection
by 16 pixels. Select a lighter shade of your background color
and fill the selection. Apply a gaussian blur of about 9 pixels,
and change the layer mode to Color Dodge. Set the layer opacity
to 60%.
Now create a new layer, and
Command/Control>Click Layer 3 to reselect it. In the new layer
contract the selection by 16 pixels again, fill with white, and
set the opacity to 50%. Transform the selection so that it is
compressed toward the bottom... you need not move it too far,
only about 1/3 of the text height. Set this layer mode to
Screen.
Now I'm going back down to the Layer 2 Copy. I'm
applying a Bevel/Embos via the Layer Styles with the following
settings:
I'm also applying a stroke via the Layer Styles.
Here's the settings:
Ok, now lets take Layer 2 and Layer 2 Copy and
increase their opacity to 70% each. I've also create a new layer
beneath layer 2 and filled it with a scanlines pattern to ensure
the type is indeed transparent.
Ok, so it isn't quite like the effect of the iMac action, but
the process is very similar. Now lets see what sort of
variations we can come up with for this puppy!
This is just one example, but as I'm extremely
pressed for time (I still have to pack!)
I've included my final result as an action, so feel free to play
around with it.
•
Download Action
That's it for this week. If you plan on
attending the conference I hope to see you there!
Until next time, Chow! |