Brushed Metal Effects

By Matt Doyle. Level: Intermediate. Published on 16 August 2001 in Photoshop.

Learn how to create cool metallic logos and shapes with this Photoshop 5.5/6 tutorial.

In this tutorial we'll look at using some of Photoshop's tools to produce realistic brushed-metal effects. You can easily apply these effects to text or to other objects such as geometric shapes and interface bars.

Get selected

The first thing we need is a selection to work on. The shape of the selection will determine the shape of our final metallic "object". You can use a selection created from a path, a selection based on a mask, or any other selection you can dream up! In this example, we're going to use a text selection to create some brushed metal text.

To create the text selection in Photoshop 5.5, click and hold on the Type tool icon in the Tools palette until the little palette pops up, then select the dotted T (also known as the Type Mask tool):

To create that selection in Photoshop 6, select the Type option in the Tools palette. You'll see that the Options bar at the top of your screen changes to reflect the type options. Towards the left of the bar, select the "dotted T" option ("create a mask or selection").

Then create a new blank document, and create a new layer for the text. Next, click with the mouse in the document where you'd like your text to appear, and type the text in a suitable font (how about a nice chunky one!):

Click the OK button, and you'll see your text appear as a selection in the document:

Adding the metal effect

Now that we have a selection to work with, let's turn it into metal! First we need a solid block of colour to work from, so with your new layer highlighted and the text selection still active, select the Fill option from the Edit menu and fill the selection with 50% gray:

Next we'll add some noise to our text, which will be the basis of the "streaks" in the brushed metal effect. Select Filter > Noise > Add Noise... and choose an amount of around 200. Make sure you select Gaussian distribution, and check the Monochromatic box to create black and white noise:

Now we'll turn those dots into streaks! Select Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. Pick a distance of around 80 pixels. You can vary the angle from the default of 0 to create the streaks in the direction you prefer:

You should now have a "brushed" effect to your object as follows:

You've probably noticed that the text has turned slightly transparent - we can see the background showing through. This is caused by the Motion Blur filter. But we want our object to be solid metal, not see-through! Let's fix this.

Select Edit > Fill again, but this time, choose Behind from the Mode drop-down list. As before, select 50% Gray:

This will "fill in" the transparent areas in our layer as follows:

Time to chunkify!

Our object is looking quite metallic now, but to really give it a 3-D "lump of metal" feel, we need some bevelling and outlining. We can easily add these effects in Photoshop 5.5 using Effects (in Photoshop 6 and later you can achieve the same results using Layer Styles).

To apply the appropriate effects to our object, first remove our selection (we no longer need it) by pressing Control+D. Then, if you're using Photoshop 5.5, select Layer > Effects > Bevel and Emboss.... We want quite a chunky effect, so whack up both Opacity values to 100% and choose a Depth of 6 pixels and a Blur of 5 pixels.

In Photoshop 6, go to Layer > Layer Styles > Bevel and Emboss. For these purposes, you probably want the Depth set to around 100%, the Size set at around 5 pixels and the Soften control set to zero. You can leave all the shading controls at default values, but have a play if you like!

To give the edges of our object a bit more definition, let's add a black outline. We can do this using the Outer Glow effect. In Photoshop 5.5, select Layer > Effects > Outer Glow, choose black for the glow colour (by clicking on the colour box and entering 000000 in the # box at the bottom), choose Normal for the Mode, and set Blur to 1 pixel and Intensity to about 50%.

In Photoshop 6, go to Layer > Layer Styles > Outer Glow. Within "Structure", set the Blend Mode to Normal, Opacity to around 65%, Noise to zero and the colour to black (the gradient should be black to transparent). Within "Elements", set the Technique to Softer, Spread to around 5%, and the Size to around 3 pixels. Experiment with this to your heart's content! You can leave Quality alone.

Finally, add a drop shadow to the object to give it more depth. In Photoshop 5.5, select Layer > Effects > Drop Shadow... (the default values will probably do fine). In Photoshop 6 use Layer > Layer Styles > Drop Shadow and try these settings: Blend mode: Normal, Opacity: 75%, Distance: 5 pixels, Spread at zero and Size: 5 pixels. Again you can leave Quality alone. We've now got a nice metallic-looking object!

To add more interest, try experimenting with a lens flare or two (Filter > Render > Lens Flare...). This example used a "105mm Prime" lens type:

You could also have a go at adjusting the tint using Image > Adjust > Hue/Saturation (check the Colorize box), and use Image > Adjust > Curves to bring out the highlights and contrast in the object, as we've done in the example at the top of the page. Have fun!

The End

New Features in Photoshop CS3

By Matt Doyle. Published on 3 April 2007 in Photoshop.

What new goodies await us in Photoshop CS3? Matt reviews the features and enhancements that Adobe have added to this industry-standard image editor. Is it worth the upgrade? Read on and find out!

If you're a professional Web designer, chances are that you've used Photoshop at least once in your life. This impressive application, nearly 20 years old, is very much the industry standard for image editing and photo retouching, and is often the software of choice for the Web designer too.

The latest incarnation - Photoshop 10, or CS3 - is just around the corner; Adobe officially launched it last week, and it's currently available for pre-order at the time of writing.

We've been playing with the CS3 beta for the last few months, and it's certainly an impressive beast. Let's take a look at the new, fun stuff that Adobe have added to their latest release, as well as areas that they've improved over CS2 and earlier versions.

New features

Although the new feature list for CS3 isn't quite as lengthy as CS2 was, there are quite a few radical changes in there - a redesigned interface, the wonderful Auto-Align Layers command, and the clamoured-for Smart Filters, to name but a few. Let's explore all these new features.

Brand new streamlined interface

The first thing you notice when firing up CS3 is the new user interface. For one thing, the toolbox has been slimmed down to a single column of buttons, rather than the pre-CS3 two-column design. This allows you to keep the toolbox out of the way on the side of your screen - great for freeing up horizontal space. You can easily flip back to the two-column version by clicking the double arrow at the top of the toolbox window.

Speaking of slimming down, Adobe have really gone to town with the palettes. The new collapsible palette docks let you reduce all your palettes down to tiny icons when you're not using them - see the screenshot on the right - which is a wonderful space saver. It takes a while to memorise the icons, but once you do you'll be flipping between palettes in no time. You can keep your commonly-used palettes, such as the Layers palette, open all the time, and collapse the rest to icons until you need them, freeing up more space to work on your images. However, if you prefer the old style interface, you can always drag your palettes out of the dock, and have them floating free again.

There's also a new Maximized Screen Mode - available by clicking the icon at the bottom of the toolbox, or by pressing F - that expands the document window to fill the available screen space between your toolbox and palette docks.

Universal Mac application and speed improvements

At last, with the release of CS3, Photoshop becomes a Universal Mac application, allowing it to run at native speeds on the new(ish) Intel Macs. In fact CS3 is generally zippier than CS2 was, with brushes and filters feeling that much more responsive than in CS2; the application is much quicker to launch too. It's nice to know that more features don't always mean more code bloat!

Smart filters

This has to be Photoshop's number one requested feature: "live" filters that you can go back and edit on the fly. These types of filters have been available for a long time in other image editing software, and it's great to see them make their Photoshop début in CS3.

They're a tad clunky to use, it must be said - you have to convert your layer to a smart object before you can apply a smart filter to it - but it's a welcome addition nonetheless. In use, smart filters behave much like layer effects in the Layers palette, as you can see in the screenshot. You can reorder the filters by dragging them in the Layers palette; this lets you control the order that the filters are applied in.

You can also set a blending mode for each filter, which is a really powerful feature.

Quick Selection tool

CS3's new, super-easy Quick Selection tool is like the Magic Wand tool on steroids. Rather than carefully clicking areas of your image to select them, like you do with the Magic Wand, you just casually "paint" around the edges of your selection using a brush size of your choosing. Photoshop then automatically selects the object you're "painting" on as it goes.

It's incredibly quick to use, and Photoshop often gets the selection border spot-on. If it gets a bit carried away, you can of course paint with Alt/Option held down to remove areas of the selection, or use the fabulous Refine Edge command. Speaking of which...

Refine Edge command

Refine Edge groups most of the commands available under Select>Modify, such as Smooth, Feather and Expand/Contract, into one handy dialog. This is great, because you can now fine-tune your selection all in one place and preview the results as you go. It works with any selection, whether made with a selection tool, or created via the Quick Mask.

Auto-Align and Auto-Blend Layers

The wonderful new Auto-Align Layers command automatically lines up several different photos of the same scene, even if the photos were taken from different angles. It's almost like a non-panoramic version of the Photomerge command.

For example, say you've taken three photos of the same scene, but with different people in. Simply stack the three photo layers on top of each other, select them, then run Auto-Align Layers. Photoshop rotates, squeezes and distorts the photos so that they all line up with each other. You can then copy and paste the people from the different photos into the one final image.

This is a pretty powerful feature, and it nearly always does a great job at aligning the images. It works best if your photos were taken at nearly the same angle though, and even then it sometimes gets it wrong. If in doubt, use a tripod!

Auto-Blend Layers, the perfect complement to Auto-Align Layers, adjusts the brightness levels of the aligned layers so that they're consistent, and also creates layer masks for the layers to mask off the ragged edges, leaving you with a nice square finished photo. Of course, because the layers stay as layers, you can still edit the individual photos if you wish.

Speaking of Photomerge, this stitching command - first built into Photoshop CS - has seen a major overhaul in CS3. The Auto-Align Layers technology is now integrated, which produces a much better result than in previous versions. It's even a fully automatic process now, though you can still go in and tweak the panorama manually if you like.

Black & White adjustment

Another oft-requested feature, the new Black & White adjustment command - also available as a new adjustment layer - lets you produce great black & white conversions of colour photos.

Although you've always been able to convert a photo to black & white simply by choosing Image > Mode > Grayscale or Image > Adjustments > Desaturate, these commands do a pretty poor job of it. This is because they don't give you any control over the conversion process.

For years, photographers have got around this by using various tricks, such as gradient maps, multiple hue/saturation adjustment layers and all sorts of other voodoo. The Channel Mixer adjustment has arguably been the most useful of the bunch; enable the Monochrome option and you can control the amount of red, green and blue that goes into the final black & white image.

The new Black & White adjustment builds on this by giving you six sliders: Reds, Yellows, Greens, Cyans, Blues and Magentas. This gives you much greater control over the mix of colours that makes it into the final image. It's also more forgiving than the Channel Mixer; the values don't have to add up to 100%, and it's much harder to clip your shadows or highlights. (Speaking of which, Adobe have thrown in a Total display in the Channel Mixer dialog, so you can check that your channels add up to 100% without getting your calculator out.)

It's an improvement in other ways, too. There's an Auto button that sets the six sliders to produce the best mix (from Photoshop's point of view, of course), and there's also a range of built-in presets to simulate various lens filters. Finally, you can add a tint - for example, a sepia tone - to the end result. This seems to produce a much nicer effect than messing around with a Hue/Saturation adjustment after the fact.

Exposure adjustment layer

It's a small change, but worth mentioning anyway: If you're a fan of using the Exposure adjustment command to correct in-camera exposure problems, you'll be cheered to know that Exposure is now also available as a non-destructive adjustment layer in CS3.

New blending modes

Another minor change in CS3 is the addition of two new blending modes: Lighter Color and Darker Color. They're simply composite versions of the existing Lighten and Darken modes.

In English, this means that they work by comparing the overall brightness levels of the two layers, rather than working on a per-colour-channel basis. Their effect, as you might imagine, is similar to Lighten and Darken but, because they don't affect the colour channels separately, they preserve the original colours in the layers.

Device Central

Device Central is a new satellite program that ships with CS3. It's designed to help you create content for mobile devices, such as phones and PDAs. You choose the device you want to create for, then Photoshop gives you a template document to use that's the right size for the device's screen. You can then preview your work on a virtual version of the device, by clicking the Device Central button in the Save for Web & Devices dialog (see below). You can also create and preview Flash, video and Web content.

It's very much beta at this stage though - it only contains generic devices rather than specific makes and models - but it'll be interesting to see how this looks in the final release.

Export to Zoomify

CS2 featured an option to export large megapixel images to a Web viewer called Viewpoint ZoomView, which lets you quickly zoom in and out of large images and pan around, Google Maps-style.

With the advent of CS3, Adobe have eschewed ZoomView in favour of Zoomify, which basically does the same thing, albeit without some of the advanced features of ZoomView. However, Zoomify works with the standard Flash browser plugin, so it doesn't need a separate plugin like ZoomView does. A big plus.

Improvements to current features

As if all those new CS3 features weren't enough, those clever-clogs at Adobe have been working hard to improve existing Photoshop functionality too.

Save for Web

The trusty Save for Web command now has the tongue-twisting name of Save for Web & Devices. It's very similar to the CS2 Save for Web, but the Edit in ImageReady button in the bottom corner of the dialog has been replaced with the Device Central button for previewing your image on an emulated device.

So why no ImageReady button? Simple: ImageReady is no more! It's gone to software heaven. The more useful ImageReady features - animation, slices and so on - have been absorbed into Photoshop itself; other features, such as image maps, have been dropped. Personally I think this is a great thing - it was always a bit cumbersome constantly flipping between Photoshop and ImageReady to do stuff like animated GIFs (which, let's face it, aren't as popular as they used to be anyway).

The dialog also contains controls for previewing an animated GIF and choosing repeat options. You now create the actual animation directly in Photoshop, using the Animation palette (Window > Animation, shown to the right). The old ImageReady features are all there, such as setting frame delays and adding tweened frames.

Cunning cloning

Many of the cloning tools, such as the Clone Stamp and Healing Brush tools, now let you preview what you're doing before you do it. To do this, hold down Shift+Alt (Win) or Shift+Option (Mac); an overlay appears, showing you what's directly under the mouse cursor. This is wonderful for avoiding those cloning accidents - I'm forever cloning a feature of the image that I didn't want to clone!

You can also now sample from the current layer combined with all layers below, rather than simply all layers, by choosing Current & Below for the Sample option in the options bar. You can also choose to ignore the effects of any adjustment layers when sampling - to do this, click the appropriate icon in the options bar.

Finally, there's a new Clone Source palette available (Window > Clone Source) that lets you store up to five different sample sources - from different images if you like - as well as scale and rotate the sampled pixels before cloning them. This is fantastic if you have a perfect area of the image to clone from, but it's at the wrong angle or size. You can also control the preview overlay from this dialog, including its opacity and blending mode.

Eyedropper tool

The Eyedropper tool, used for sampling colours from a document, has had a small update: you can now sample bigger ranges than 5 by 5. Much more useful in the day of 20 megapixel images!

Vanishing Point

Adobe have improved the incredibly handy Vanishing Point command, first introduced in CS2, with a couple of great new features.

Firstly, you can now Alt/Option+drag a resize handle on a plane to rotate that plane about any angle relative to its neighbour. In other words, you're no longer restricted to creating planes that are perpendicular to one another. This gives you a lot more flexibility and control over the types of perspective shapes you can create.

Secondly, whereas the CS2 Vanishing Point limited you to moving your selection over one plane at a time, in CS3 you can stretch your selected image over multiple planes; the image hugs the contours of each plane, twisting and turning as it goes. Perfect for making package mock-ups and so on.

Curves

The Curves adjustment dialog has had a bit of an overhaul. If you modify the curves of individual colour channels - great for correcting colour casts - you can now see the individual channel curves superimposed on top of the composite curve. This means you can see the whole adjustment on the one graph, which is handy.

Adobe have also added a histogram, as well as black and white point sliders below the graph, meaning that you can now easily do Levels-type adjustments within the Curves dialog.

Other useful additions include some great built-in presets for various colour correction scenarios, and a more obvious way of switching between brightness levels and ink levels. You can also view which parts of your image you're clipping, much like Alt/Option-dragging the sliders in Levels dialog. Finally, there's no longer a button to expand the size of the dialog - it's permanently "expanded" now. This seems like a good move; the old smaller Curves dialog always felt a bit cramped anyway.

Brightness/Contrast

Let's face it - the Brightness/Contrast adjustment has never exactly been the professional's tool of choice. With its somewhat "rough and ready" approach, and its enthusiasm for clipping images, posterising and destroying shadows and highlights, it's generally been relegated to the "special effects" department.

Adobe have addressed this with the new Brightness/Contrast; it's now much tamer. Brightness now adjusts the spread of the brightness levels across the shadows, midtones and highlights; it's a bit like using the gray point slider in Levels. Contrast adjusts the contrast across the midrange - the equivalent of using an S-curve or inverted S-curve in the Curves dialog. It's much harder to clip your image now. If you're really keen to muck up your image though, you can always check the Use Legacy option in the dialog to return to the old-school method.

Camera Raw

The Adobe Camera Raw plugin lets you open raw, unprocessed image files from many digital cameras - they're the digital equivalent of a film negative, in many ways - then process them, adjusting white balance, exposure, sharpening and so on, before opening them in Photoshop proper.

In CS3, Camera Raw has seen some major improvements. The most significant is probably that you can now open regular JPEG and TIFF files and process them in Camera Raw. Other welcome additions are the Recovery slider - for clawing back blown highlights created by dragging the Exposure slider - and the wonderful Fill Light slider, which is just great for adding punch to the lower midtones of an image.

Adobe have also overhauled the user interface, with more intuitive grouping of the sliders, and introduced a couple of new tabs, such as the HSL/Grayscale tab, which lets you control hue, saturation and luminance across eight colour ranges, as well as perform a black and white conversion right in the dialog. There's also the Split Toning tab, for adding a touch of colour to your shadows or highlights.

If you want to perform really precise, detailed adjustments to your images - whether they're raw files, JPEGs or TIFFs - the new Camera Raw is definitely the way to go.

Slightly better HDR support

High Dynamic Range, or HDR images contain a much wider range of brightness levels than standard images, allowing you to capture both your dark shadows and bright highlights without clipping. Usually this is done by taking multiple photos at different exposure settings - known as bracketing - then using Photoshop's Merge to HDR command (File > Automate > Merge to HDR) to merge the photos together into one HDR image.

CS3 features some minor improvements on the HDR front. Its Merge to HDR command lets you load and save camera response curves for later use, and it also uses the new alignment function from Auto-Align Layers to better align the photos. Having said that, it did a pretty bad alignment job when I tried it on a test image (shown here). It aligned the clouds in the image fine, but - presumably because the clouds moved between shots - the rest of the image was all out of alignment. CS2 was actually better in this regard! Hopefully things will improve in CS3 final.

In addition, more functions within Photoshop now support 32-bit HDR images, such as the Levels and Hue/Saturation adjustments, and the Emboss filter. It's still quite a limited range, though - hopefully HDR support will improve in future versions of Photoshop.

Better PDF handling

Adobe have made a small enhancement to the way Photoshop opens PDF files: You can now specify an exact width and height when importing a PDF page, rather than just specifying the resolution.

Improved printing

Printing from CS3 is now much simpler, with a single Print dialog handling both previewing and printing itself. The print preview window is also bigger, and Photoshop now integrates more tightly with certain printers.

Adobe Bridge

Adobe's Bridge software, bundled with Photoshop, lets you view, manage and organize your images, Photoshop documents and other graphics files. The latest version sports a new, snazzy-looking dark grey look - you can change the colour if it doesn't appeal - and various other improvements to the interface. For example, there's a wider range of views to change from, including a vertical filmstrip, and a Light Table view.

The new Bridge also features a Filter pane, letting you filter by an impressive range of criteria, including landscape or portrait orientation, and even aspect ratio. Another nice touch is the ability to group selected images together in a stack, for easier organisation. The new slideshow view is quite snazzy too, with Ken Burns-style sliding of images - though frankly it made me a bit queasy after a while!

So is it worth the upgrade?

CS3 offers some pretty nice improvements over CS2. Smart filters are a long-awaited feature and, while they're not the smoothest of things to use, the fact that we finally have non-destructive filters in Photoshop is a big plus. The Quick Selection tool is wonderful and really speeds up that initial selection process, while Auto-Align Layers will doubtless open up a whole new world of possibilities for photographers.

Speaking of photographers, this group will also appreciate the greater processing flexibility that the new Camera Raw offers, as well as the new Black & White adjustment.

From a Web designer's point of view, it's nice to see ImageReady-like features finally being incorporated into Photoshop, although this will no doubt infuriate the photo-manipulation purists.

It would have been nice to see bigger improvements in some areas - particularly HDR image handling - but overall this seems like a worthwhile upgrade across the board. And of course, if you run an Intel Mac like me, the upgrade's a no-brainer!

http://www.elated.com/articles/new-features-in-photoshop-cs3/

Groovy 3D Lighting Effects

By Matt Doyle. Level: Intermediate. Published on 1 January 1998 in Photoshop.

Here we take you through the process of creating some cool 3D graphic effects in Photoshop using the "Lighting Effects" filter.

The Photoshop Lighting Effects filter is one of the most powerful filters built into Photoshop. With it you can create fantastic 3D detail in your images. In this tip we're going to show you various 3D effects applied to a simple button, using just the Lighting Effects filter and channels.

A lot of these effects can be achieved using the "Effects" options in Photoshop 5 or the "Layer Styles" options in Photoshop 6, but it's still worth knowing the theory behind them, and this tutorial has lots of other goodies in too, so read on!

Lighting Effects - a primer

If you are fairly familiar with the Lighting Effects filter, you might want to skip this section.

Here we see the default Lighting Effects dialog (get there by selecting Filter > Render > Lighting Effects):

On the left hand side you can see a preview of your image with the current Lighting Effect applied to it. The dot in the centre is a light, and the ellipse around it marks the area affected by that light. You can drag that light to where you want it using the mouse. Drag a second light onto the scene by dragging the light bulb icon at the bottom. Remove a light by dragging it to the trashcan.

On the right hand side are all the settings for the filter. These are described below.

Style: This is a list of preset settings. Click a preset to bring the settings up in the dialog. You can save your own settings to a new preset by clicking the Save button and typing a name. The presets are stored in Adobe\Photoshop\Plugins\Filters\LtStyles\.

Light type: There are three types of lights you can place in the scene. Directional is parallel light, as if from a far away source such as the sun. This gives a completely even lighting effect. Omni gives the effect of the light being directly overhead, creating a circular beam, while a Spotlight comes in from the side, casting an elliptical beam.

Intensity: The brightness of the light.

Focus: Controls how wide or narrow the beam is (spotlights only!).

Gloss: How much light is reflected by the "surface" of your image. Matte produces low reflections; Shiny produces maximum reflections.

Material: How much reflected light comes from the colour of the light source, and how much from the colour of the "surface". Plastic reflects all the light's colour, while Metallic reflects all the "surface" colour.

Exposure: The overall brightness of the effect.

Ambience: How much ambient light contributes to the scene. -100 means all ambient light (no light sources); +100 means no ambient light (just the light sources).

Texture Channel: This is where all the fun is. Here you can define a texture map (sometimes called a bump map) to create a 3D lighting effect. To do this, you create a channel with your bump map, then select that channel from this box. You can swap the high and low points (hills and valleys) in your bump map by toggling the White is high box, and vary the heights of the hills and valleys using the Height slider. Simple!

Light Colours: By clicking in the white squares on the right of the dialog, you can choose the colours for each of your lights (top) and for the ambient light (bottom).

Let the fun begin!

Now that you know how to use Lighting Effects, let's start making some 3D buttons! Make a new image and fill the background with a colour - or just grab this example JPEG and open it in Photoshop:

Make a new layer and draw a circular selection from the centre of the image (hold down Shift and Alt (Option) to draw a circle from the centre). Fill the circle with your favourite colour!

Now we'll make a channel based on this circle, which we will use as a texture map in the Lighting Effects filter. Ctrl+click the layer in the Layers palette to select the circle (if not already selected). Now to soften the 3D effect, feather the selection a bit. Go to Select > Feather... and enter a radius of 3 pixels. Now we make this selection into a channel. Go to Select > Save Selection... and click OK in the Save Selection dialog (make sure New Channel is selected). Now deselect with Ctrl+D.

Open the Lighting Effects dialog (Filter > Render > Lighting Effects). Make sure the DEFAULT style is selected. From the Texture Channel box select the last item - if this is the first channel you've made, it will probably say "#4":

Take a peek at the preview on the left. Wow, your button is now 3D! Experiment with different positions and orientations of the light, and different settings, till you get the effect you want. To add to the 3D effect we've placed a drop shadow under the button:

3D text!

Let's try some 3D lettering on the button. Ctrl+click your new layer in the Layers palette to reselect the circle. Fill it again with your favourite colour.

Choose Select > Save Selection... and click OK in the "Save Selection" dialog (make sure New Channel is selected). Now deselect with Ctrl+D.

This should make a new channel - probably called "#5". We didn't feather the selection this time, but that's OK, as we're going to blur the channel later to soften the Lighting Effect.

Click on the Channels tab in the Layers palette to get to the Channels palette. There's your new channel at the bottom. Click on it and it will appear in the document window as a white circle on black.

Now use the Text tool to place some black text on the channel (make sure the foreground colour is black beforehand!). Press Ctrl+D when you've finished to deselect:

Now we blur the channel to make the Lighting Effect smoother. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur... and select a radius of 2 pixels. Click OK.

Great! Now click on the RGB channel, then on the Layers tab, to return to normal editing mode. Go to the Lighting Effects filter and pick your new channel (probably called "#5") from the Texture Channel box. Now your button has 3D text carved into it!

More 3D Fun!

Of course, you can use your new channel as a texture map for anything, not just your button! Here the Lighting Effects filter is applied to the background, using the same texture map:

You can use all sorts of images as bump maps. Just select your image, copy it, make a new channel in the Channels palette, and paste your image into it (it will appear as greyscale, of course). Here we see the Clouds filter used to make a channel, which is then used to apply Lighting Effects to our background for a "lunar landscape" effect:

And here we have the Hands.jpg sample file that came with Photoshop, turned into a bump map - spooky!

Fading One Image into Another

By Matt Doyle. Level: Intermediate. Published on 2 January 2003 in Photoshop.

In this tutorial you'll learn how to use layer masks to create the effect of one image gradually fading into another.

Have you ever wanted to create an image that depicts two separate images fading into each other?

This is a nice professional effect that's easy to create using Photoshop's Layer Masks. This tutorial shows you how it's done.

Open the two images in Photoshop

We're going to use the following two images from our ImageKits in this tutorial:

Open these two images in Photoshop. They'll appear as two separate documents.

Special Offer: Save up to $150 when you buy Adobe Photoshop Lightroom software together with Photoshop CS3. Click Here!

Put the images into one document

So that we can do the fade between the images, we'll need them both in the same document. The easiest way to do this is to shift+click on the "Background" layer in the "books" document, and drag the layer on top of the "clouds" document:

(Holding down the shift key ensures that the "books" image will appear in the centre of the "clouds" document.)

You should then have both your image layers in the "clouds" document, as follows:

Add a layer mask

We'll now create a layer mask on the "books" layer. A layer mask behaves just like a regular mask, but it is attached to a specific layer. As with a normal mask, dark areas of the mask hide the underlying layer, while light areas of the mask reveal the underlying layer.

To create the layer mask, make sure the "books" layer ("Layer 1") is selected in the Layers palette, then select Layer > Add Layer Mask > Reveal All:

You can see that the layer now has a layer mask attached to it (the white thumbnail to the right of the layer thumbnail). Also, note that the mask is highlighted with a white rectangle around it - this means that you are now working on the mask, rather than the layer image. (You can click on the layer thumbnail and mask thumbnail to switch between the two.)

Fill the layer mask with a gradient

We're now going to fill the layer mask with a gradient fill, going from white in the top left corner to black in the bottom right corner. Remember that white areas allow the layer to show through, and black areas hide the layer, making the underlying layer visible. This is how we will achieve our fade effect!

With Layer 1's layer mask still selected in the Layers palette, select the Gradient tool:

Select the "Linear" gradient type and, from the drop-down colour box, choose the "Black, White" swatch:

Now, click and drag in the document window from the bottom right of the image to the top left, to create the gradient fill:

You should now see the finished effect, with one image smoothly fading into the other!

Tweaking the fade effect

If you're not happy with the fade effect, you can play with the layer mask to achieve the desired result. Remember that the layer mask can be edited and drawn upon, just like a regular bitmap image!

For example, to produce a sharper transition, increase the contrast of the layer mask (Image > Adjust > Brightness/Contrast...):

You might also like to try playing with the various blending modes for Layer 1, or applying different filters to the layer mask, until you get the effect you're after.

Enjoy! :)

http://www.elated.com/articles/fading-one-image-into-another/

Make Money With Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is one of the most popular imaging software packages around, but it's expensive! Here are five ways you can earn money using Photoshop or Photoshop Elements -- either as a business enterprise, for some extra money, or just to recoup your investment.

1. Offer a Photo Restoration Service. I'm sure just about everyone has a photo or two that hasn't stood the test of time all that well, especially really old ones. Using the Healing Brush, Spot Healing Brush, and Patch tools, you can make old or damaged photos look like new again.

2. Become a Photograph Doctor. Whether it's "red eye", "pet eye", poor exposure, or "finger over the lens syndrome" Photoshop can transform a ruined image into a pristine one. You can also use Photoshop to make a colour photograph look like a black and white one, or colour tint a black and white one to make it colour. Not everyone is a good photographer, so you need never be short of "patients".

3. Design Greetings Cards. With the photo enhancement and graphic design qualities of Photoshop, designing greetings cards has never been easier. You can enhance photos, make them into drawings or paintings, combine photos for humorous cards, the possibilities are endless. Birthday cards, get well soon cards, condolence cards, Christmas cards or cards for other holidays like Mothers' Day, the list goes on and on. You can easily find card blanks and envelopes from specialist suppliers.

4. Design T-shirts. Ever seen something and thought "that would look great on a T-shirt"? Well, you're not the only one! With Photoshop you can make it a reality. You can get transfers from stationery shops, and plain, cotton T-shirts can be purchased from low cost suppliers and even some supermarkets.

5. Web Design. Whether it's a full website, or just a few buttons or banners, web design is a skill that's in demand right now. You could take commissions, or design some generic "boilerplate" designs that people can download from a website and customise themselves.

Of course, you may need to get some extra equipment -- like a colour printer, scanner, and digital camera -- but you can usually pick this type of equipment up inexpensively on eBay or other websites. A DVD of royalty free images is also a must -- although check the terms and conditions to make sure you're allowed to sell products derived from them.

Word of mouth is always the best form of advertising, so ask friends, relatives, work colleagues, and other acquaintances if the need (or know anyone who needs) your products or services. You could also approach retailers with a portfolio of your work, and offer them commissions on any work they send your way.

How to Print Images With Photoshop

If you use Photoshop then you must be aware of its fine printing capabilities. People create images with Photoshop mostly for web design or printing purposes. Let's discuss how you can print an image through the Photoshop interface the right way.

When printing through Photoshop there's one thing you need to be aware of, the dots per inch (dpi). This refers to how many dots per inch of paper, your printer can print. If you want a clearer image then you want more dots per inch. The more dots a printer can print in an inch of paper the better the quality. Printers are clarified according to the dots per inch they print. A printer which prints more dots per inch is generally better and more expensive.

The most commonly used dpi value for image printing is 300 dpi. Meaning that the printer will print 300 dots per inch of paper. That is, if your printer can actually print in that resolution which is very likely, unless you own a really old printer.

You can set the dpi of an image through the Photoshop menu:

Image > Image Size.. > Resolution

In the Resolution input box enter the value you want for your image. Your version of Photoshop might not mention dots per inch but pixels per inch, which is the same thing.

Now let's talk about the quality of ink for your image. This depends on your printer type. Inkjet printers for example can be cheap and they use jets of ink that they spray on paper. Ink quality is medium. Dye printers are more expensive than Inkjet printers and use a system to melt dots of dye that can generate over 16 million of colors. Ink quality is medium to high. Laser printers are very popular these days and they print in good quality. Ink quality is high. Last but not least there are the Thermal Wax printers that use blocks of wax that melt on the paper.

Now let's say you want to print an image through Photoshop. Before doing anything else go to:

File > Print with Preview

A dialog opens. Through that dialog you can set all kinds of properties for your image. For example you can define the position of the image on the piece of paper. You can specify the space you want to be left blank from top or bottom or you can let Photoshop center the image by ticking the "Center Image" check box.

Then you can define the scale of the image, it's height and width. I use the "Scale to Fit Media" check box a lot, since it lets Photoshop automatically adjust the printable size of the image.

Depending on your image you might want to print on portrait or landscape. You can change that through the "Page Setup..." button on the right of the dialog. A new dialog will appear that also allows you to choose the type and the size of paper you will use for printing.

Well, that's about it. All you have to do now is click the "Print..." button. Depending on your printer, a dialog will appear that will let you customize printer properties. For example you might want to print three copies of the image or tell the printer to use more or less ink. It's really easy to print images through Photoshop. I use this software all the time mostly for the "Scale to Fit Media" check box I mentioned above.