|
lot of designers I know hate
math, they are right brained and cannot stand those pesky little
numbers cramping their creative style. Something you may not be
aware of is the fact that Photoshop is a pretty good
mathematician. Photoshop comes with an align and distribute
feature that does all the calculations for us.
Lets demonstrate this by creating a metal panel
with some rivets on it.
Start with a new document. 300 x 300 pixels.
Apply a linear gradient using the default copper
setting.
Create a new layer and name it "rivet"
Choose the elliptical marquee tool.
Change the gradient to radial
Draw a small rounded selection and fill with the
gradient.
Add a bevel layer style
Use the settings here. Make it a "pillow emboss"
to give the appearance of the rivet being recessed.
Here is the finished rivet
Duplicate the layer 3 times and roughly space
them out. Don't worry about precision at this point.
Link all the rivet layers in the layers palette.
The align feature will only work on linked layers and wont
effect the layers that are not linked.
Click the "distribute Vertically" button from
the top toolbar.
Notice the rivets are now evenly spaced.
Click on the align left button and notice that
they are now perfectly aligned.
The evenly spaced riverts.
Here I merged the rivets, duplicated the layer
and dragged it to the right hand side. I then used curves and
the hue/saturation controls to get a nice bluish gray metal
feel.
Have fun with the alignment tools and
plaster all your images with rivets. |