Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show you how to create stunning, op art poster designs
with just the Wave filter and how to add color to them.
Before we begin, if I've helped you learn or improve in Photoshop or even just inspired
you to explore your creativity, please help support my channel by becoming a patron through
Patreon for as little as $2 dollars a month.
Click the Patreon card at the upper, right.
Create a new document by going to File and New.
Make the Width and Height: 8 inches each and the Resolution: 300 pixels per inch.
The Color Mode is RGB and 8 bits per Channel.
Click the box to open the Color Picker.
The Hue and Saturation should both be 0 and for the Brightness, type in 50.
Then, click OK and click Create or Open.
Check your foreground and background colors.
If they're not black and white respectively, press "D" on your keyboard.
Go to Filter and Filter Gallery.
Open the "Sketch" folder and click "Halftone Pattern".
The Pattern Type is "Line", the Size is 12 and the Contrast is 50.
We'll convert the line pattern into a Smart Object, so we can modify it non-destructively.
To do this, click the icon at the upper, right corner of the Layers panel and click, "Convert to Smart Object".
Go to Filter, Distort and Wave.
Feel free to experiment with the amounts from the ones I'm using.
I'll make the "Number of Generators": 259, the "Wavelength": 998 and 999, the "Amplitude":
1 and 999 and the "Scale": 1 and 19.
The "Type" is Sine and the "Undefined Areas" are "Repeat Edge Pixels".
To save save in the Layers panel, let's collapse the Smart Filter.
Make a copy of the layer by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + J. I’ll change its Blend Mode to
"Overlay", but again, have fun experimenting with various blend modes.
You can always change them later.
Rotate the layer by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + T to open the Transform Tool.
If you see this message, it's just letting us know that the Smart Filter will be temporarily
turned off while we use the Tool.
Just click OK.
Go to a corner and when you see a curved, double-arrow, press and hold Shift
as you rotate it 90 degrees.
Pressing Shift snaps the bounding box to specific degrees.
To accept it, press Enter or Return.
Make a copy of this layer and I'll change its Blend Mode to "Pin Light".
Open your Transform Tool and, as before, if you see this message, click OK.
Go to a corner, press and hold Shift and rotate it 135 degrees.
Then, press Enter or Return.
Go to Layer, Smart Objects and "New Smart Object via Copy".
This makes an independent copy of the Smart Object that isn't linked to the original.
This allows us to affect the copy without affecting ant other Smart Objects.
I'll change its Blend Mode to "Subtract".
Click the small arrow to see the Smart Filter and double-click "Wave" to open it.
I'll make the "Number of Generators": 70 and click OK or press Enter or Return.
We'll enlarge the size of our document, in case we want to have it printed as a poster at some point.
But, before we do that, let's convert our visible image into a Smart Object.
To do this, scroll down to the bottom layer of the Layers panel and Shift-click it to
activate all the layers.
Then, convert them into one Smart Object.
By the way, if you like, you can rotate your design with your Transform Tool.
I'll undo the rotations.
Go to Image and Image Size.
I'll make its Width and Height: 24 inches, but you can make yours any size you'd like.
Let's view it at 100%, so we can inspect the clarity of the lines.
Press Ctrl or Cmd + 1.
As you an see, it looks pretty blurry.
This is because whenever a raster-based image is up-scaled, the pixels are being stretched
over a larger area, thus making them look less sharp.
Fortunately, there's an quick and easy step to remove the blurriness.
Go to Image, Adjustments and Threshold.
The default Level is 128.
Just click OK.
The lines are jagged, but at least, they're sharp.
To fit the entire design on our canvas, press Ctrl or Cmd + 0.
Next, I'll show you how to make your design in color.
There are many different methods to apply color for this project, however, for the sake
of time, I’ll show you the tow that I like.
Click the Adjustment Layer icon and click "Gradient Map".
Click the Gradient bar to open the Gradient Editor.
Click the lower, left Stop and the box.
Pick a color to replace the black and click OK.
Click the lower, right Stop, the box and pick a different color to replace the white.
If you’d like to make one color more dominant than the other,
drag that color’s slider toward the middle.
I’ll delete the Gradient Map to show you a second, more nuanced method to add color.
Open your Channels panel.
If you don’t see it, go to Window and Channels.
Click the circular icon at the bottom of the panel
to make a selection of all the tonal values of your design.
Open back the Layers panel and click the New Layer icon to make a new layer.
Click the Layer Mask icon to make a layer mask of the selection next to the empty layer.
Make the empty layer active and fill it with any color.
The color is irrelevant at this point.
I’ll fill it with black.
Make a copy of the layer and its Layer mask by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + J.
Go the the Layer 1 layer mask and Shift-click it to make it inactive, since we won't be needing it.
Double-click the top layer to open its Layer Style window.
Click "Gradient Overlay" and the gradient bar.
Click the lower, left Stop, the box and pick a color.
Click the lower, right Stop, the box and pick another color.
Click OK on the Color Picker and the Gradient Editor.
Feel free to change the angle of the gradient.
Double-click the “Layer 1” layer to open its Layer Style window and click "Gradient Overlay".
Click the gradient bar and repeat the steps to create a new gradient.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
Thanks for watching!