Fan of creative technology, elearning, instructional design and a little geeky

Preparing the Trace Graphic

January 4, 2008 Leave a Comment Written by Cari Jansen

Digitip 063 – Adobe Photoshop CS3

A month or so ago I demoed a masking technique that works well with text in Illustrator during an Adobe eSeminar I delivered. At the time I promised to write this technique up as a digitip, however, an extremely busy workschedule meant I’d not yet gotten around to posting the tip. But a promise is a promise. To make up for the delay in posting this tip, I’ve spruced up the tip with Adobe Photoshop CS3 artwork creation, and that’s where I’ll start Part 1 of this three-part tip.

063_finished.png

There are many different ways of achieving this end result, some much quicker than my tip, purely using Photoshop or Illustrator. The tips uses Photoshop’s Filter Gallery, Illustrator’s Live Trace, Colour Groups and Opacity Masks…  and will show you how you can still edit each of those components at the end…

Part 2 of the tip will take the Photoshop artwork we’re creating here into Illustrator and trace it, and Part 3 will create the Text Effect.

Creating the trace graphic

We’re starting in Photoshop CS3 and are creating a new graphic. As I’m imagining this might become a header of some sort, I’ll stick to A4-width and about 8cm height. (File > New).

063_01.png

Because I want to limit the colour effects for the final result I’m restricting myself to creating a greyscale image.

063_02.png

Fill the image with 100% Black (Edit > Fill). I want to be able to edit the Filter settings after initially applying them. In order to do this the Background must be converted to a Smart Filter Layer. Select Filter > Convert for Smart Filters.

With the use of a few filters the scattered look is generated. Select Filter > Filter Gallery and expand the Sketch filters and click Graphic Pen.

063_04.png

063_03.pngA diagonal pattern appears. Let’s stick to the default settings for now. We’re going to add apply another Filter. Click the New Effect Layer icon .

Question for Adobe: why is this caled a New “Effect” Layer and not a “Filter”Layer?

063_05.png

Two Graphic Pen Effect Layers appear in the Filter Gallery dialog.

063_06.png

The top one is the newly created one. With this Layer still selected, expand the Brush Strokes Filters and click Accented Edges.

063_08.png

063_07.png

Click OK.

Now let’s look at the Layers panel. It displays our Smart Filter layer, and in addition shows us the Filter Gallery that’s been applied to the image.

063_09.png

To further edit the two Filter Gallery effects or add additional Effect Layers, double click Filter Gallery.

The previous dialog appears again, and you can make changes to the settings for the two Effects Layers. I’m pretty happy with my default result at this stage, so will leave things as they are.

Time to save the image and bring it into Illustrator…

I’m saving as a Photoshop file with Layers in tact.

Part 2 of this tip will bring the graphic into Illustrator…

Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
Similar posts
  • Fixing up old photos with Adobe Photoshop — As part of the April 2015 Adobe User Group meeting in Perth, I recorded a series of videos that covered some of the tips we reviewed during that meeting. For a full read-up about this meeting, please visit the Rejuvenating old photos and documents meeting round-up page. Video 1: Converting an old sepia tone back [...]
  • How to create a tint for a colour in Adobe Illustrat... — How can I make a tint for a colour in Adobe Illustrator? It’s a question I’m asked regularly by Illustrator users. There are two issues with the default settings when defining new colour swatches in Illustrator: When you apply the default colour swatches in Illustrator to your artwork, the swatch colour is not associated with the [...]
  • Illustrator CC (2014): Rectangle tool and Transform ... — On June 18, Adobe released #CCNext. One of the applications updated in this release is Adobe Illustrator. We’re up to version 18 now with the Illustrator CC (2014) release. Renewed Transform panel and live shapes The renewed Transform panel contains a Rectangle Properties section that is active when you have a rectangle or rounded rectangle shape selected in [...]
  • How to remove a background from an image in Photosho... — How do I remove a background from an image? The following Photoshop tutorial (youtube video) shows one of many techniques there are for removing image backgrounds. The technique used doesn’t permanently remove the background pixels in the images, but allows you to further correct and fine-tune the transparent background you create through the use of [...]
  • Illustrator: Patterned Gradient Stroke Effect — Illustrator CS6 introduces the ability to apply a gradient to a stroke. This means we can now create tubular looking line effects, without the need to use more complex blending techniques. In addition, Illustrator CS6 provides strongly improved pattern controls. We can now create not only rectangular pattern tiles, but also hexagon shaped tiles, and [...]

No Comments Yet

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *