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LordMaul's BRAND NEW(!!) Newbie/Intermediate Photoshop tutorial - #3!!

LordMaul

Lifer
Alright ladies(...pics?) and gents, here is the 3rd Photoshop tutorial by yours truely.

This is for slightly advanced newbies, or those at a intermediate level. IE, someone who has had a little experience and can get around here and there in PS, but is not advanced.

Check out my other tutorials by searching for "photoshop" or something of the like if you missed them.

Open up a new canvas, say, 800(wide) x500(tall) pixels big. Now take the paint bucket (right click the Gradient Tool if you don?t see it?it?s 6th from the bottom-right side of the toolbox). Now choose black as your foreground color (IE, the one on top of the two color boxes in the bottom of the toolbox), and fill the canvas with black by left-clicking inside.

Now grab the Text tool (The upper-case ?T? inside the toolbox) and left click, hold and drag a fairly large box inside the canvas. Now, change your foreground color to a light-gray. Click inside the text box you made before and write something. Anything you want. You could put ?Maul is better than MartytheManiak?, but that may be a bit much. For this, I?ll use ?AnandTech? because it is such a perfect word. *wipes nose*. 😉 Make the size of the text 30 pt, and the font just plain Arial.

Now click the little checkbox at the top of the program, next to the big red ?X?, and that should make your text ?permanent? until you click inside of it with the text tool again.

Now duplicate your layer. This is done by right clicking on the layer named ?*whatever word you picked*? inside the Layers window. A little box should pop up, with ?OK?, ?Cancel?, and some text boxes, including ?Name?. Name this ?Reflection?. Click on this layer with the ?T?(text) tool, highlight it, and change the color to white.

Now Rasterize the layer/text. This means you are now making the text something editable with TOOLS, rather than just plain text that can be re-sized, the color easily changed, etc.

Next, with the ?Reflection? selected, go to ?Edit>Transform> Flip vertical? in the menu bar at the top of your screen.

Now select the ?Move? tool (first tool on the upper-right corner of the toolbox) and move the ?Reflection? layer so that is looks likeTHIS

With the ?Reflection? layer selected, go to Edit>Transform>Skew. Now grab the lower part of the box by left clicking and holding down, and move it to the right?till it looks like THIS.

Now right click inside the square, and choose ?Distort? on the little menu that pops up. Click, once again, at the bottom of your ?square? and drag it straight down a bit?DO NOT change the angle, just the HIGHT of the square. It should now look something like THIS.

Click the checkbox at the top to ?OK? your changes.

With ?Reflection? still selected, go to Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur and blur with a radius of 1.5?.this gives the reflection/shadow a nice, warm and fuzzy feeling?or something to that general effect.

Now select the other layer named?well, whatever your word was that you chose. If you were a good little ATOT?er and chose ?AnandTech?, or a smart, handsome/pretty, loveable ATOT?er and picked ?Maul is cooler than MartytheManiak?, then THAT would be your word(s).

With that layer selected, go to Filter>Render>Lighting Effects. It will ask you if you want to Rasterize the type?click Yes, or OK. Make the settings LIKE THIS. Make sure you set the Texture Channel to ?*word* Transparency?.

That?s pretty much it. It may look a little wrong to you, and if you want, you invert this by clicking each of the 3 layers and pressing ctrl-I.



There are a few neat little effects you can use that are similar to this, and I may post them. This is just one of the basic ideas for a drop-forward shadow.

Have fun! Remember, post what you get out of this, and POST(not PM) any problems you may be having! 😀
 
Awesome Tutorial LM !!!

Now I'll have something to work on tommorow !! It's very cool of you to share your skills with all of us 😀
 
Hey LordMaul, make a tut on how to make my portfolio site. 😉

Seriously though, what your doing here really is great.
Creating more interest for people in photoshop is really awesome. Most people are so very intimidated by the program.

Making a tutorial is no easy task. That is why I've never done them myself. You have to take a good bit of time to make them understandable to the users, and to go back through them... ect, well.. obviously you know how it is.

Great job, keep up the great work.

If you ever need some help, let me know.

 


<< Hey LordMaul, make a tut on how to make my portfolio site. 😉

Seriously though, what your doing here really is great.
Creating more interest for people in photoshop is really awesome. Most people are so very intimidated by the program.

Making a tutorial is no easy task. That is why I've never done them myself. You have to take a good bit of time to make them understandable to the users, and to go back through them... ect, well.. obviously you know how it is.

Great job, keep up the great work.

If you ever need some help, let me know.
>>



Thanks Phuz! Yeah, it's a bit tedious, but it's fun when I see other people learning and having fun with Photoshop, realizing it's capabilities and what they can do with it without having to be a professional. 🙂

I may not be able to reply right away, as I've got some things to do, but I'll try my best if I see anyone in need. 😀
 
My creation!!

Not too hard 🙂

So how much quality is lost if the file is saved to a jpg? It doesn't look bad compared to the one in PS, so I'm assuming not too much on a simple image like this?

I'm gonna have to search to find your other ones because PS does seem intimidating when you have no knowledge of it....

Thanks for the tutorial LM 🙂
 


<< So how much quality is lost if the file is saved to a jpg? It doesn't look bad compared to the one in PS, so I'm assuming not too much on a simple image like this? >>



As much as you want to be. You have control!
Of course you will lose some quality when going from a multiple meg image to a couple hundered kb image... but most people can't notice.

 
that's cool, LordMaul, good job with that

i'd like to see when you get to advanced... this stuff is a tad beginner, but good! 🙂
 


<< that's cool, LordMaul, good job with that

i'd like to see when you get to advanced... this stuff is a tad beginner, but good! 🙂
>>



Thanks. If you want to see a more challenging tutorial, check out this thread. There, I show how to make something that looks like this.
 


<<

<< that's cool, LordMaul, good job with that

i'd like to see when you get to advanced... this stuff is a tad beginner, but good! 🙂
>>



Thanks. If you want to see a more challenging tutorial, check out this thread. There, I show how to make something that looks like this.
>>

LordMaul,

Do you have a portfolio online for people to look at?
 


<< Do you have a portfolio online for people to look at? >>



Nah, I never really thought anyone would be interested in my work. I suppose I could put one up...maybe I'll do that. 🙂
 
<<<< <--wishes s/he could afford photoshop >>



LOL...if you want to afford it for free PM me>>



Or, she could just get linux... Mandrake (and most distros actually), ship with the GIMP... VERY VERY similay to photoshop. And what's more, SuSE comes with moonlight, a full out 3d rendering program... 🙂
 
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