Doug's 5.5 Photoshop User Cover - Page 9

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.

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.

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