Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. I'm going to show you how to carve a message
into the side of a rock wall.
I provided this image for you to download, so you can follow along.
Its link is located in the video description or project files.
If your foreground and background colors aren't black and white respectively, click this icon or press "D" on your keyboard.
Open your Horizontal Type Tool and choose a font. I'm using "Abaddon Regular". If you'd
like to use it, I provided its link, as well. For this font, I'll start with a temporary
size of approximately 140 points, Sharp, Center Alignment and Black for its color.
Click on your document and type out your text. I’m typing "We are One" in Latin.
To adjust its size, double-click on the large "T" to highlight all your text and go to Window and Character.
The Character panel will open. Drag the Size icon to the right or left to increase or decrease
its size. To adjust the space between the lines of text, drag the Leading icon to the right or left.
To adjust the space or kerning between two characters, click between them,
hold down Alt or Option and press the right or left arrow keys on your keyboard.
To close the Character panel, click the double, arrowhead icon.
To center your text on the document,
open your Move Tool and press Ctrl or Cmd +A to select it all
and click the Align Horizontal Centers icon
and the Align Vertical Centers icon.
To deselect it, press Ctrl or Cmd + D.
Let's convert the text into a Smart Object, so if we decide later to change the text or
even the font, we won't have to redo all the effects.
Click the icon at the upper right
of the Layers panel and click "Convert to Smart Object". You know it's a Smart Object
if you see this icon on the thumbnail. Double-click the thumbnail to open the Smart Object. We're
going to add a simple frame around the text. To do this, go to Image and Canvas Size.
Change the Inches to Percent and in the Width and Height, type in 10 to make the canvas size
10% larger all around, so we have room to add the frame. Let's find the exact center
of the document. First, go to View and make sure Rulers and Snap are checked. If they
aren't, just click on them. Place your cursor on the left ruler and drag out a guide line
to the center. It'll snap in place because we have Snap checked. If you don't see the
guide line, press Ctrl or Cmd + H. Drag out a guide line from the top ruler to the center.
Open your Rectangular Marquee Tool, go to the crosshair of the guide lines, click and
hold your mouse or pen and press and hold Alt or Option as you drag out a rectangular
selection around your text.
Click the New Layer icon to make a new layer. In this layer,
we'll add the frame. Go to Edit and Stroke. Make the Width: 10 pixels and the Location:
Inside. Click OK and then deselect it.
Go to Image and Trim.
Tick "Transparent Pixels"
and click OK.
The "Trim" command trimmed away the excess transparent pixels surrounding
the frame. Now, it's cropped right up against the frame, itself.
Click the small "x"
on the right of the Smart Object tab and when you see this warning,
click "Yes" to save the changes.
The next few steps will be to make the text conform to the irregular surface
of the rock wall. First, click off the eyeball of the text layer to hide it and make the
background active. Make a copy of the background by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + J.
Go to Filter, Blur and Gaussian Blur.
Blur it 2 pixels and click OK.
We'll use this blurred background
for our displacement map, which will essentially distorts the text to the background's tonal values.
Displacement maps generally give better results when they're slightly blurred. We'll
save the blurred background layer by going to Layer and Duplicate Layer.
Open the Document list
and click "New". Type in "Displacement" and click OK or press Enter or Return.
Go to File and "Save As".
Save the Displacement map to your Desktop for easy access
as a Photoshop file.
Then, click "Save".
If you see this warning, just click OK.
Now, we can close the Displacement file
by clicking on the small x" icon on the file's tab.
Now that we saved the Blurred background copy as the Displacement file,
we can trash the layer that we used to create it.
Make your text visible and active. Change its Blend Mode to "Soft Light".
Click the "fx" icon and choose "Bevel & Emboss".
The Style is "Inner Bevel".
For the Technique,
I'll use "Smooth", but feel free to experiment with "Chisel Hard" or "Chisel Soft". Tick
"Down" for the Direction. Check "Contour" and click OK.
Go to Filter, Distort and Displace.
Make the Horizontal and Vertical scales: 10, "Stretch to Fit" and "Repeat Edge Pixels".
Then, click OK.
Click the "Displacement" document and click "Open".
Notice your text and its frame instantly conformed to the rock surface.
If you want to change or edit your text and
border, you can do it without having to start over because we saved them as a Smart Object.
To do it, double-click on the thumbnail of your Smart Object to open it.
Double-click the large "T" on your text layer to highlight your text and type out your new words. If
you want to bring the frame in closer to your text, make the frame layer active
and open your Transform Tool by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + T. Go to the middle of a side
and when you see a horizontal, double-arrow, press and hold Shift + Alt on Windows or Shift +
Option on a Mac as you drag the Transform in. Then, press Enter or Return or click the checkmark.
Click the small "x" on the the Smart Object tab and when you see this warning,
click "Yes" to save the changes.
Instantly, the the new text and border were updated.
Next, I'll show you how to angle it and give it dramatic lighting.
Make a composite snapshot
of your image by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E on Windows or Cmd + Shift + Option + E on a Mac.
Zoom out by pressing Ctrl or Cmd and the Minus sign on your keyboard.
Open your Pen Tool and choose Path. If you're using an earlier version of Photoshop, this is the
icon for the Path Tool. Click outside your document approximately here, release your
cursor and click approximately here. Continue until you've made a path approximating this
shape. When you're back to your first point, you'll see a small circle. This indicates
that your Path will close once you click. Open your Paths panel. If you don't see it,
go to Window and Paths. Click the icon at the upper, right corner and click "Make selection".
Feather it 40 pixels and click OK or press Enter or Return.
Open back up the Layers panel
and click the Adjustment layer icon. Click "Levels".
A layer mask automatically appears
next to the Adjustment layer. The shape inside the layer mask was created from the selection
we just made. Invert it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + I.
Click the Levels icon
and drag the Output white to the left to darken it.
Make a composite snapshot
and open your Transform Tool.
Go to a bottom corner and hold down Ctrl + Alt +Shift on a Windows or Cmd + Option
+ Shift on a Mac as you drag the corner out to an angle you like. Then, press Enter or
Return. To see your document at 100%, press Ctrl or Cmd + 1.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
TV. Thanks for watching!