TV Lines

Start by opening the image you wish to alter. I chose to use the
background image from one of Adobe's tutorial images.

Create a new image with the same width as your image and a height of one pixel.
Fill this image with black

Now change the canvas size by clicking IMAGE>>CANVAS SIZE. Change
the height to 2 pixels while keeping the width the same size. Be sure to force the anchor upward.

You will now have an image with one pixel black and one pixel white. Create
a new selection by pressing Ctrl+A. Now you need to make this selection the active pattern by clicking EDIT>>DEFINE PATTERN.

Return to your backgound image and create a new layer. Fill this layer with your
new pattern by clicking EDIT>>FILL and choosing Pattern for the contents and the blending Mode as Overlay

There you have it. Now play around with the Mode settings and have fun.

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Wrapping Text

More people have asked me to create a tip for wrapping text around an object
than any other trick. Normally I would just send them an email detailing how it could be done with nothing more than one of the supplied filters. Well, I broke down and decided to create a tip and post it for everyone to use. So here it is in all its glory...
Starting with a new image, place your text making sure it just touches the
left edge of the image as shown

Now go to the Layers pallete and un check "Preserve Transparency"

With "Preserve Transparency" unchecked you can now wrap the text.
But first we must re-scale the text so that when it is wrapped it does not look squashed. GotoLayer>>Transform>>Scale and increase the height of the text by about one half.

Now we need to make a square selection around the text. Use the
Marquee tool and press the shift key while drawing a perfect square around the type. If the selection is no centered on the text just right use the arrow keys to adjust it.

All that is left is toapplyFilter>>Distort>>Polar Coordinates and selecting
Rectangle to Polar.

That's all there is to it... I will be adding variations of the same tip to
create different effects so be sure to check back

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Plastic Type (Uses Eyecandy Filters)

Create a new image at 72dpi and RGB color. Place your text using a light grey
for your color. (Lighter colors work best for this effect.)

Now load the Layer 1 Transparency by clicking on Select >> Load Selection
Using the glass filter from Eyecandy, select the "Transparent Button"
preset and apply the filter

Create a new layer then use the Cutout filter from Eyecandy with the
settings: DIRECTION: 135, DISTANCE: 5, BLUR: 8, OPACITY:80 and black as the shadow color

Create a new layer then use the Cutout filter with the
settings: DIRECTION: 315, DISTANCE: 5, BLUR: 8, OPACITY:80 and white as the shadow color

Now return to Layer 1 and go to Image >> Adjust >> Hue/Saturation
to change the color. You can also use Color Balance to fine tune the color to your liking

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Textured Background

Start out by creating a new image "200x200 @ 72dpi"

Switch to the channels palette and create a new channel

With the new channel active, apply the Noise filter and
adjust the levels till you get the effect you desire.

Return to the RGB channel and apply the Lighting effects filter

Lighting Source: Directional
Intensity: 20
Focus: 50
Gloss: 100 (shiny)
Material: 75 (plastic)
Exposure: 45
Ambience: 13
Texture Channel: #4
White is high

Now that you have your texture apply offset 100 to
the left and 100 down making sure wraparound is checked.

Once you have applied the Lighting filter you need to color your new
background. To do so, create a new layer and fill with the color you want your background to be

Go to the layer palette and change the Layer Mode to Color Dodge.

All that's left is to add the background tag to your HTML file and enjoy
your new background.

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Polka Dots

This might seem obvious to some experienced users of Photoshop, but to
all of you who don't know - here's the trick.

I am not sure polka dots is the common name for this, but well - this is how
I call it (you can call it whatever you want).

After creating a new image, bring up Channel Palette
(Window>Show Channels) and create a new channel by clicking a New Channel icon. Now draw a rectangular selection and fill it with white. That will be a base for our polka dots.

Now, deselect and gaussian blur it all. Notice that as bigger value of blur
you use as deeper your polka dots will be. Our techniques uses levels of gray to render the dots. I used value of 20 here.

Very good, now - remember polka dots are very customizable depending
on the shape of your channel. Here I used rectangle just because it was quite easy to create. Let's add some drama by twirling it a little bit (Filter>Distort>Twirl). Hey, it's quite a nice thingie by itself, right? Something very spacy. Ok let's continue.

Some people offer to use mode conversion to create dots, but that's
inconvenient, right. Let's use Color Halftone filter. (Filter>Pixelate>Color Halftone). I used default settings in this example, but of course you can try to play with settings (Max. Radius). Using it you can increase/decrease size of the biggest dot and of course all other.

Woohoo! We've got it. It also might produce small unneeded pixels around
the image. Just delete those.

Ok, now we have a channel of our polka dots. Switch to RGB channel, I'll
show you how to use that in designs.

Fill your image with nice blue color. It can contain anything actually, even a
texture. Just make sure you don't get messed with layers.

Select>Load Selection>#4

Pick up a lighter color and fill the selection (Edit>Fill..). Quite stylish, huh?

Finish your artwork by putting some stylish type there, stroking it (Edit>Stroke)
and drop a shadow (you know how to do that, don't you).

Don't forget about the style!

Depending on the shape of your channel, you can achieve different effects
(you can even use type here!). Check out. these samples

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Cropping an image

Get your favorite picture in soft light, get that feathery effect...all with Photoshop's built-in features...Thanks Lisa!

Open up any image.
Select the Paths Palette.
Select the pen tool from the tools palette
Click on the outline of the picture so that you get something like this

That may take some practice!
From the paths palette, select MAKE SELECTION
Use a feather of about 4 pixels
Now from the paths palette, select TURN OFF PATH
Copy the selected image by using CTRL-C
You can then paste it on a new blank image using CTRL-V
This will give you an effect like what you see on top.
Did you get it right?

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Dotted lines

Here's a simple way to create dotted lines. The best part of this technique
is that it takes advantage of some simple, built-in settings for the brushes, unleashing a ton of possibilities. No other programs needed and no fancy channels handiwork, er, mouse-work that is.

Here's the final product, in simple form. Let's get started. Open a new
document, any size with a little width, say 200 wide and any height.

First, choose the pencil tool to make sure the settings apply to this set of
brushes. Before doing anything else, be sure to save your brushes if you have a fancy set of already tampered with brushes. You will be playing with the settings and it is always nice to be able to load your previous set.

Double-click on the second smallest brush in the pallette window. Your
pallette should look rough as we are working with the pencil tool. The smoother brush version will come later...

You are now viewing the brush options. The important change to make
for the dotted line effect is the spacing. For the simple dotted line I created above, simply change the Spacing option to 250%. You can change this to any setting up to 999, but for now just try out what I used.

Now, simply draw with your pencil and you have your dotted line! To make
sure your line is straight, hold down the shift key while you draw the line. Another technique is to single-click your starting point and then while holding the shift key, single-click your ending point; PS draws the dotted line between the two points!

For a few variations try differing the size of the brush and increasing the
spacing. Also, you can load a square set of brushes from the Adobe Photoshop>Goodies>Brushes & Patterns>Square Brushes which gives you square dots using the same options. Switch over to the Paintbrush and see that the same effect is created, only with smoother anti-aliased dots. All of the same options also apply to the Airbrush tool as well.

Along with the size and spacing of the dots, if you need to do dotted
lines with an oblong shape that are on an angled line (whew!), simply change the angle of the brush. Just like a caligraphy pen, you can change the angle of the stroke of your brush; but, in this case it changes the direction of the dot in your line. Now you are an expert at PhotoShop dotted lines!

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Yet another bevel tip

Open a new RGB image. Type your text in black on a new layer.

In the channels palette, drag one of the channels to the "new channel" icon.
This will create channel 4. Duplicate channel four to make channel 5. Invert channel 5 (ctrl/cmd+i) so it appears as white text on a black background.

Make channel 5 active. Now load channel 5 as a new selection. To do this,
you can either hit select/new selection and choose channel 5 from the pull down menu or you can save some hassle and hold the ctrl/cmd key and click on channel 5.

Now you have something that looks like the above image with a selection border
(marching ants) around your text. Invert the selection (ctrl/cmd+shift+i) so that it borders the whole image as well as your selection. I can't get the selection border with my screen capture, so you'll have to use your imagination.  

Tip for new users:

Now you need to get a nice fade on your text that starts with white
on the inside and fades to a dark gray. There's several ways to do this with photoshops native tools as well as third party plugin filters (KPT gradient designer set to circular shapeburst). To keep things simple, first make sure your background color is black (keystroke d, then x). Feather the selection (select/feather) by five pixels and hit delete.

(Still a little too light around the edges...hit delete once more.)

(Perfect!)

We're done playing with the channels. Go back to the layers palette and
select a new layer. Hit ctrl/cmd+d to make sure nothing is selected. Fill it with something...anything! You can use a pattern, solid fill, gradient, image or whatever you want.

You'll be using the "lighting effects" filter to create the beveled look. If you
haven't worked much with lighting effects, don't get frustrated and give up. Once you learn how to use it, you'll find it is one of the most useful filters for all kinds of text effects.

Tip for new users:.

After filling a new layer, open the "lighting effects" menu
(filter/render/lighting effects). If I remember correctly, "lighting effects" is the only thing in Photoshop that uses floating point math to create true 3D effects. It uses a grayscale texture channel to determine what is "high" or "low" depending on the brightness of each pixel.

We'll use a single white light coming from the upper left side. For the light
type and properties, I used the following settings:

Light type: Omni
Intensity: 20
Gloss: 0
Material: 0
Exposure: 0
Ambience: 0
Texture Channel: #5
White is high

You'll probably have some horrible banding. I got rid of it (much to my surprize)
by converting the image to a 64 color indexed mode with difusion dithering.

Remember channel 4? You can load that as a new selection, feather it by
one pixel, and hit delete to remove the background.

Good luck!

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Prodigy

here's a tip from Sid 6.7 This is a cool effect that was inspired by the
"Prodigy: Fat of the land" CD cover... Basically it makes the image look like its moving towards you...
Pic out your favorite picture, (i.e. a car, an animal...) Make sure the image is
in RGB mode. You can check by clicking on Image and then Mode.
Make a quick mask.
Select the area of the image you want to look clear... (i.e. the front of the
car, Quick Mask channel in the Channels palette. head of the animal.) using the laso or marquee tool.
Select>Inverse
Edit>Fill fill with black 100%, then do Select>None
Apply a gaussian blur arounr 13 or 14, 9 or 10 for small images.
Now use the Brush Strokes>Sprayed Strokes filter. Stroke length 12,
Rad. 7, right diagnol.
Now go back to Standard edit mode.
Inverse your selection.
Apply a radial blur zoom. Amount 40 And there you go!

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Stamp

Open a new RGB image. Type your text in black on a new layer. In the
channels palette, drag one of the channels to the "new channel" icon. This will create channel 4, which looks identical to the other channels. That's okay.

Duplicate channel 4. Now you have channel 5. Run a gaussian blur over it.
The amount of blur is dependant on the size of your image. For this 200x200 image, I used a blur of 2 pixels

Use the stylize/glowing edges filter on the channel. Make it look similar to the
edges in the image below

Create a new layer and fill it with 50% gray (edit/fill). You'll be using the
"lighting effects" filter to create the stamped look. If you haven't worked much with lighting effects, don't get frustrated and give up. Once you learn how to use it, you'll find it is one of the most useful filters for all kinds of text effects.

For this effect, I used two spotlights, yellow and a blue. Create a blue
spotlight shining down from the upper left. When you get it looking about right, hold the alt/opt key and click on the blue dot in the middle of the light. This will duplicate the light. Make your new light yellow and move it a few pixels away from the blue one. Slightly change the angle of the yellow light until the image is bathed in a medium white light with blue and yellow around the edges. For the light type and properties, I used the following settings

Intensity: 100
Focus: 50
Gloss: 100 (shiny)
Material: -100 (plastic)
Exposure: 0
Ambience: -50
Texture Channel: #5
White is high

The next step is to tweak the background. Pay close attention here. To more or
less isolate the text from the background, go back to the channels palette and select # 5. Use select/new selection/channel 4 and invert the selection (ctrl/cmd+shift+i). Fill the selection with white then deselect (ctrl/cmd+d), and invert the channel (ctrl/cmd+i).

Now, go back to the layer you were working on (should be layer 3) and
load channel 5 as a new selection. You'll probably have to contract it by a few pixels to get it just right (select/modify/contract). The sky is the limit for the background texture. I used filter/texture/grain with an intensity of 20, a contrast of 10, and a horizontal grain type to get the finished product below.

Good luck!

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