How's it going everyone this is Chris from Spoon Graphics.
Welcome to the first of my new video tutorials here on the Spoon Graphics YouTube channel.
So I've been writing tutorials on my main Spoon Graphics website for a number of years,
many of which are now buried deep in my archives, so I thought why not bring some of them back
to life as video tutorials, starting with my most popular tutorial of all time; How
To Create a Realistic Money Effect in Photoshop.
The effect we'll be creating mimics the engraved illustration style often used on money.
Now there's plenty of tutorials online that show how to create a very basic engraved effect,
but it doesn't look very realistic.
The great thing about this technique I've discovered, is it captures the difference
in tone of the image and the lines seem to warp around the contours of the subject.
Not quite as much as an authentic hand crafted engraved illustration, but it does the job
nicely.
If tutorials aren't for you then you might be interested in my ready made Photoshop Action
which produces this effect, link to which will be down in the description below.
Otherwise if you're interested to see how it's done, then follow along with this guide.
So first of all we need to create a series of screen overlays that will give the image
the appearance of engraved lines.
I'm going to go with a large 2000x2000px canvas to cater for pretty large images.
Remember you can always scale down your elements in Photoshop, but scaling them up will result
in a loss of quality.
Create a new layer, then select the Line tool and make sure it's set to 1px.
Hold the Shift key and draw a line near the top of the canvas.
Next, go to Filter > Distort > Wave, then we need to configure the settings.
Enter 10 as the number of generators, 199-200 for the wavelength, 5-6 for the amplitude
the 100% scale.
Activate the selection tool again, then hold ALT+Shift+the Downwards cursor key on your
keyboard to produce a series of evenly spaced wavy lines.
This leaves us with a ton of layers, so shift click down to Layer 1, then press CMD+E to
merge them all together.
Next, we need to make a repeating swatch from this pattern, so we'll use a guide to mark
out a identifiable area, like the centre of a peak.
A quick trick is to use a marquee selection to find the exact centre point by snapping
a guide to the centre handle of the transform selection command.
Find an identical point elsewhere in the pattern and drag out another guide.
Now we need to find two identical points vertically, so zoom
in and carefully drag a layer to match up to the pixels of one of the lines, then find
the exact same pixel further down the pattern to outline a square area.
Use the shortcut CMD+J or drag this layer over the New Layer icon to make a duplicate,
then double click it to open up the layer styles, add a stroke then configure it to
1px and align it to the Centre.
Duplicate this layer, then open up that stroke setting and increase it to 2px.
Repeat the process again, so duplicate the layer and increase the stroke, this time to
3px.
Repeat it again, this time 4px.
Then do this two more times until we get to a 6px stroke.
One important step here is to Raterize the strokes by selecting all these layers, right
clicking and selecting Rasterize Layer Styles.
Otherwise there's a little glitch I discovered where these tiny portions of the stroked lines
will disappear when the canvas is cropped.
Once the layers are rasterized, grab the crop tool and make sure it snaps perfectly to these
guides.
Hit enter to crop the canvas to size to create a repeating pattern swatch.
Turn off the visibility of all the layers except layer 1, including the background to
leave the transparency.
Next, go to Edit > Define Pattern, and give it name like Screen Pattern 1.
Turn off layer 1 and turn on layer 2, go to Edit > Define Pattern again but this time
call it Screen Pattern 2.
Do this again with layer three, naming it Screen Pattern 3.
Then again with Screen Pattern 4...
Screen Pattern 5, and finally screen pattern 6.
It's worth giving these patterns a quick test in a new document, so create a nice big canvas
at say 3000px, select the fill tool, change the mode to Pattern, then select one of the
new Screen Patterns and make sure it repeats seamlessly.
With those screen patterns complete we can now begin with the actual effect.
The good news is now we've created the patterns they can be instantly applied to any future
images, without having to go through this process again.
I'm going to use this queen image.
So first duplicate the background 6 times by repeatedly pressing CMD+J, then turn off
the visibility of all the layers.
Turn layer 1 back on, then go to Image > Adjustments > Threshold.
Enter 80 in the options then hit OK.
Turn on the next layer, then go to Image > Adjustments > Threshold but this time enter 100.
Turn on the next layer, go to Image > Adjustments > Threshold again but this time add on an
extra 20 to make it 120.
You've probably guessed the next step but Add a Threshold effect to the next layer,
this time 140.
Next layer is 160, then finally 180.
Then turn off all the layers.
Next, go to Image > Canvas Size.
Change the dropdown to Percent then enter 200%.
Create a new layer, press CMD+A to Select All, activate the fill tool and choose Screen
Pattern 1 from the dropdown list, then click to fill this layer with the repeating pattern.
Create another new layer, then change the pattern to Screen PAttern 2 and fill this
layer.
Repeat the process with Pattern Number 3 on a new layer.
Create and fill a layer for Pattern 4, Pattern 5 and finally pattern 6.
Double click on the top layer to change its name and enter Shadows.
Then change the next two to Dark Shading,
The following two to Light Shading, then name the last layer Highlights.
Activate the first Dark Shading layer and press CMD+T to transform.
Hold Shift and rotate this layer by 90 degrees so the pattern flows vertically.
Do this again with the next Dark Shading layer.
Press Cmd+T and Rotate the Highlights Layer by 45 degrees.
Turn off all layers again, then turn back on the bottom threshold layer.
Go to Select > Color Range, and change the setting to Shadows.
Next, select the top screen layer, which is Shadows, then apply a Layer Mask which will
use this selection.
Turn on the next threshold layer and go to Select Color Range again.
This time add this selection as a layer mask to the Dark Shading layer.
Repeat the process with the next layer, so load the color range selection, then apply
it to the next dark shading layer.
Same again for the Light Shading layers.
Then finally the last threshold layer's selection is applied as a Layer Mask to the Hightlights
layer.
Now this is the moment of truth.
Delete all the threshold layers, then turn on all the screen layers.
Add a new layer above background and fill this with white to see the full effect.
You can actually make some further adjustments to the pattern by unlinking all the layers
from their layer masks, then press CMD+T and scale down the screens while holding Shift
and ALT to increase the density of the pattern.
All you need to do then is crop image to size, then you can add a Solid Colour Adjustment
Layer and choose a dark green.
Change this layer's blending mode to Color to allow the green to colourize the effect
to give it the appearance of money.
If you want to see more tutorials like this be sure to head over to my spoon graphics
website, where there's loads of written tutorials to learn Illustrator and Photoshop.
Join the mailing list while you're there to be the first to hear about new content and
to receive my free resources bundle, and don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe
to the Spoon Graphics YouTube channel if you enjoyed this video tutorial.