Doug's 5.5 Photoshop User Cover - Page 9
September 13, 2001
Doug Gornick (Creative Director for Photoshop User magazine
and all-around Photoshop brainiac) created this chrome
effect for the cover of the magazine, and after it ran, I
was deluged with questions on how he did it. Special thanks
to Doug for letting me share his amazing technique.
Yeah, but how did he create the background?
After
Doug created this cover effect, we showed how he created it
(in the following issue of Photoshop User , and sure enough,
after we did, we received e-mail asking, OK, now how did he
do the background? Believe it or not, it was a stock photo
background that was stretched a bit and had massive amounts
of Unsharp Mask applied to make it look more metallic. The
stock photo background was from PhotoDisc, a part of
GettyOne (as are all the images in this book). They ve got
about a gazillion stock images on their Web site
(http://www.gettyone.com) in both royalty-free and
licensable images.
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STEP ONE: Open a new document in RGB mode. Set 25% gray as
your foreground color. Create your type (you ll need to use
very large type for this effect, ideally 100-point or more).
We used the typeface Garamond Condensed, but most serif
fonts will work just fine.
STEP TWO: Rasterize this Type layer by going under the Layer
menu, under Rasterize, and choosing Type. In the Layers
palette, make a copy of your text layer by dragging it to
the New Layer icon. Set your foreground color to 50% gray,
and press Shift-Option-Delete (PC: Shift-Alt-Backspace) to
fill this text layer with 50% gray. Press the letter v to
switch to the Move tool.
Feathering Trick
One of the downsides of the feathering feature is you can t
see how much you re really feathering; it s pretty much a
guess because there s no preview. Here s a cool trick that
many people use to see a feathered edge effect before they
apply it: First, make a selection (inside the edges of your
image) and then press the letter q to enter Quick Mask mode
(your selection will appear as a red box by default). Go
under the Filter menu, under Blur, and choose Gaussian Blur.
When you apply the blur, you ll see the edges become very
soft. When the softness of the edges looks right, press the
letter q again to return to normal mode and make your
selection active. Go under the Select menu and choose
Inverse to choose the background edges, rather than the
inside of your selection, and press Delete (PC: Backspace)
to softly feather the edges at the exact amount you saw in
the Quick Mask preview.
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STEP THREE: Press the Right Arrow key on your keyboard five
times then the Down Arrow key five times to nudge this
darker gray layer down and to the right. In the Layers
palette, drag this darker layer down directly below your
lighter layer. In the Layers palette, click once on your top
(lighter) layer, then press Command-E (PC: Control-E) to
merge these two layers together.
STEP FOUR: Press the letter "m" to switch to the Rectangular
Marquee tool. Draw a thin rectangular selection across the
top of your text, then hold the Shift key and add a series
of thin rectangles with varying depths across your type (as
shown above).
STEP FIVE: Go under the Select menu and choose Feather.
Enter 5 pixels for low-res images or 20 pixels for 300-ppi,
high-res images, and click OK.
STEP SIX: Press Command-L (PC: Control-L) to bring up the
Levels dialog box. Grab the bottom right Output slider, and
drag it all the way over to the left until the readout shows
64, then click OK.
STEP SEVEN: Press the Down Arrow key on your keyboard eight
times to move the selection downward. Then press Command-I
(PC: Control-I) to invert the selection.
Chiseled Inner Bevel Type - Page 8
Photoshop 6 Down and Dirty Tricks
Doug's 5.5 Photoshop User Cover - Con't - Page 10
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