Monday, November 30

Create a Colorful Vibrant Typographic Wallpaper

 Create a Colorful Vibrant Typographic Wallpaper

In this tutorial we will create a nice simple colored but very good looking typographic wallpaper. With a little help from Xara Extreme Pro 4 the final result will be an astonishing one. You have the possibility to download the PSD file.

Have fun .



1.
Create a new document in Photoshop, size: 1280×1024, resolution: 300dpi.

2.
Using rectangle tool (U) draw two rectangles and fill them with black.
(I filled mine with a grey just to see how to arrange them)



3.   
Rasterize both layers. ( Right-click on layer -> Rasterize Layer )

4.   
Hold Ctrl key and click on the thumbnail of the first layer to select it.

5. 
Grab the Gradient Tool (G), select the Radial Gradient option and use these colors #000000 and #1e1e1e. Apply the gradient like shown in the next image.






6.   
Repeat step 4 and 5 for the second layer.






7.
Press Ctrl + D to deselect everything.

8. 
Open Xara 3D.

9. 
Write your text. NOTE! Every letter should be written seperately because in Photoshop we want every letter in different layer. Font I used is 100pt (size) Franks Regular (Download)



10.
With Selector Tool (V) select all letters and change their color to 10% Black.





11.  
 Keep selecting all letters and using Extrude Tool (E) apply the follwing effect:



12.  Now this step is a little bit annoying. We have to change the lightning colors for each letter. You see the 3 points of light for each of the letters. (3 arrows) We have to change the green and blue ones. Double click to change the color. (if anyone knows a better way to do this step please let me know)




Everything should look like this:



13.
Another annoying step! For each letter you have to create a new Xara document and drag and drop the letter inside it. After you are done, each document containing a letter has to be exported in PSD format.
File --- > Export -- > Save as: --> PSD.

Export settings:
Resolution: 300 DPI and make sure you check: Export just visible objects.

14.

 Returning to Photoshop! Load all the PSD’s in Photoshop and drag and drop each letter in your document.

Arrange the letters.



15.
 We have to make the text smaller. Select all the letters and Free Transform them until you get the desired result.



16.
  Now lets color things a little bit. Right click a letter layer. Go to Blending Options & Gradient Overlay and use the following settings:

The colors that I used for the gradients

* #feae31 and #efe457
* #d0f359 and #abdc28
* #f2835c and #e55b2b
* #eb3dee and #fc85fb
* #2cafe3 and #81dbff



17. 
Duplicate the O, M, A layers, bottom letters. (Select a layer and hit Ctrl + D to duplicate)

18.

 For every duplicated layer hit Ctrl + T (Free Transform) and do the following:




19. 

 Repeat step 18 for the rest of the bottom letters.



20.
 Select the duplicated layers, Right Click them and press Merge layers.

21.
Add a mask layer on the layer resulted from step 20.



22.

 Select Gradient Tool and use a Foreground to Background Gradient



23.
Apply the gradient as I did:





24.
 Right click on a letter layer. Choose Blending Options & Pattern Overlay and apply the following values:



25.
After you are done with the pattern. Right-Click on Pattern Overlay and choose Create Layers.




26. Choose Eraser Tool (E) with the size of 20 – 30px and hardness 0% and delete the area pointed in the next image (make sure you have selected the new layer that says Pattern Fill):


 

27.
Repeat the previous step for all the letters.

28.
 For the smaller text I used Century Gothic (favorite font) with the sizes of: 9, 5 and 4.5pt.

Saturday, November 28

How to create an impressive-looking text effect

In this tutorial, I will show you how to create a strong and eye-catching text effect.
We’ll be using gradient overlay, pattern overlay styles and combining different techniques to create a fiber background.




1. Create a new document (Ctrl+N) in Adobe Photoshop with the size 1920px by 1200px (RGB color mode) at a resolution of 72 pixels/inch. Select then the Paint Bucket Tool (G) to fill the new background layer with #353430 color.



2. To create a fiber background we’ll download Spiderman Pattern from brusheezy.com. Copy the pattern file and paste it into, C:/Adobe/Photoshop/Presets/Patterns.
Then create a new layer and fill this layer with #959595 color using Paint Bucket Tool (G).



3. Set Opacity to 41% for this layer and click to Add a layer style icon from bottom part of the Layers panel and select Pattern Overlay. Go to Pattern Picker, and additional Spiderman Pattern can be added by loading them from the Picker’s submenu.



4. We’ve got the next fiber background:



5. Click on the same layer on the bottom part of the layers’ panel on Add a Mask icon and choose a Soft Round brush of black color from Brush Tool (B)( set the Opacity to 15% in Options bar)



6. Use Soft Round brush to clean out a little the picture’s edges:



7. Make a copy of the last made layer, set the Fill to 0% and click Add a layer style icon from bottom part of the Layers panel to select Gradient Overlay:  





8. Click in the color bar to open the Gradient Editor and set the color stops as shown.  
Click OK to close the Gradient Editor dialog box.




9. We’ve got the next effect on background




10. Click the Horizontal Type tool (T). Select a font, size and color in the Character panel.








11. Click in the image and type HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010 text. Press Enter to apply the text.




12. Click on Add a layer style icon from bottom part of the Layers panel and select Drop Shadow:




13. Also set the Gradient Overlay




14. Click in the color bar to open the Gradient Editor and set the color stops as shown. Click OK to close the Gradient Editor dialog box.




15. We’ve got the next greetings text :



16. Using the Free Transform (Ctrl+T), we can incline the text a little to give it the same look as on the next picture . The final result !




Source : HERE