 Jed6Premium
join:2002-05-16
Atlanta, GA
| Photoshop Basic Lighting Effects Tutorial This tutorial will show you how to achieve a 3d shiny beveled text effect in Photoshop. It will show you the basics of working with the lighting effects filter as well as channels. Also, I will be using a lot of keyboard shortcuts, which greatly improve your Photoshop
proficiency. K, lets get started:)
Press D to reset your colors to default Black & White.
First off, Create a new document (Ctrl + N). The bigger the better for this effect, so
I made mine 700x400. Next thing you have to do is double click the background layer to unlock it -- I named mine "Background" just for simplicity.
Next, Take out your Type Tool (T) and type any text of your choice. I typed my Initials in Monotype Corsiva font at 400pt. Your font size will vary depending on the word you chose to use.
Next, you need to load the selection of the text layer you just created (Ctrl + Click on the layer)
Next, open up your channels palette (Window >> Channels). Create a new channel by clicking the little icon that looks like a page with the corner turned up (  ). Creating a new channel will automatically switch your foreground color to White, so now fill your selection with white (Alt + Del).
The next step is to apply the gaussian blur filter to your selection (Filter >> Blur >> Gaussian Blur). I used a value of 7.8 pixels, but just play with it until you get something that looks close to mine.
Now click back to your layers palette, and create a new layer (Ctrl + shift + N). Lets name this layer "Gray". Next step is to fill this layer with 50% gray. Change your foreground color to 50% gray (128, 128, 128) and fill the layer with your foreground color (Alt + Del). It should now look just like mine.
Here is where the fun starts:). Open up the Lighting Effects filter (Filter >> Render >> Lighting Effects). Change the texture channel to "Alpha 1" and click ok. (You can play with the sliders a little, but default is just fine for this effect).
The next step is to seperate the text from the background on your "Gray" layer. To do this, load the selection from your inital text (Ctrl + Click your original text layer). Then we need to invert the selection (Ctrl + Shift + I). And lastly, clear the selected pixels (Del).
You can now throw away your text layer, we won't need it anymore.Ok, Now we're almost done, all thats left is to colorize the text and add a background. To colorize your text, make sure your "Gray" layer is presently selected and open up Hue/Saturation (Ctrl + U). Make sure the "Colorize" box is checked and play around with the sliders to get the color of your choice. I wanted mine to have a blue tint, so I used the values 223, 33, 0.
The last step is to use curves (Ctrl + M) a bit to bring out the highlights and dark spots of your image. Just drag the line around until you get a pleasing result.
And Thats it!:)
*If your text looks a little rigid around the edges (which mine does) its not tough to fix. Load the selection of your letters (Gray layer for me). Contract the selection by 1 pixel (Select >> Modify >> Contract), invert the selection (Ctrl + Shift + I), and clear the pixels (Del).
Then just play around, add any background you like, and admire your work:)
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aim sn Cl3tus01 | Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel
[text was edited by author 2003-06-30 00:37:10] |
