|
Over the past few years Adobe has generated it's
own niche industry for software designers, generating oodles of
add-on programs and filters to be plugged into and/ or used in
conjunction with Photoshop. If a person had the money to throw
around, they could fill a small house with software packages
related to Photoshop! Having had a bit of time to explore all
the new possibilities version 6.0 gives us in the form of layer
styles, updated text manipulation and so on, one may wonder if
third party additions to Photoshop are even relevant anymore. My
answer would be yes, especially for those who don't have time to
learn each nuance of Photoshop. It takes time to learn this
stuff, as anyone who has cracked that box with the Eye will tell
you. For the designer who is trying to earn a living while
learning, 3rd party plug-ins are still relevant and will help
generate fast effects that will sell, even for the graphics
novice.
This week I'm going to take some black text and
see what we can do with it using a few of these third party
plug-ins. I will be using 2 of Alien Skin's products (Eye Candy
4000 and Xenofex),and Flaming Pear's Super Blade Pro.
To begin, I'm creating a new white image, a new
layer, and entering text with the type mask tool. Then I'm
filling it with black Here's the foundation image:
For those of you who collect fonts, this is
called Eight Track... it's a freeware font but I'm not sure
where I picked it up!
Ok, now that the base is in place (I never fool
around with the base layer, remember?), I'm going to duplicate
it and start filtering. I would like my text to have an outline
or border of some sort, so I'll create a new layer beneath the
duplicate layer. I can play with this later... let's see what
the text turns out like first.
I really like Super Blade Pro for generating
textures, so I'll start there. Here is a snapshot of the Super
Blade Pro interface with my settings... keep in mind that I
didn't tweak these much- they are nearly default.
For a closer look at our text after one filter
setting is applied, take a look at this:
Now that is pretty cool, considering we have
barely started! Some other variations (using the randomizer,
or'dice' button) appear thus:
There are many variations we could consider, but
let's stick with our first image for this exercize.I really like
the chrome effect this first batch of settings gave us, so let's
play with Eye Candy 4000 for the next step. To prevent an error
I can't back out of (something I'm prone to do) I'll duplicate
the chromed layer and work on it. I'm also mindful to keep my
selection active. This just makes things easier.
Ok, with Eyecandy, I applied the default
settings for Bevel Boss and then followed up with the defaults
for Glass. Here is our text now:
We lost a lot of the chrome, but the glassy
effect is always and eye catcher!
Now I'm just going to copy this selection, move
the selection one pixel to the left and one pixel up, paste, and
repeat this 6 or 7 times. This gives us some depth to make those
letters really stand off the page. Once this looks fairly deep,
I fill the background layer with back (simply to give me a
different color scheme perspective), return to the first chrome
layer and apply the Xenofex Electrify Filter. I'll add a slight
twirl to this layer.
After adding a bevel and inner glow to the top
most layer (using the Photoshop Layer Styles), here is our end
result:
Not too bad for a few minutes work! Eye Candy
4000, Xenofex, and Super Blade Pro are all actionable, so you
can repeat this effect over and over as needed in action form.
This example, as always, was quick and easy.
Granted, with some work you could probably duplicate this effect
using Photoshop exclusively, but using 3rd party plug-ins does
give you a powerful set of tools that will help trim your
development time. |