Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show you how to transform signatures
into beautiful Spirographs and create an Action
that will do it automatically. Scan some signatures into your computer.
This will also work with fonts, as well. Experiment with different styles such as
outlined fonts and scripts. Next, create a new document
by pressing Ctrl + N or WIndows or Cmd + N
on a Mac. Make the Width
and the Height 870 pixels each and the Resolution
300 pixels per inch. We're making the resolution this high
in case you want to print the results. Open the fly-out list in the Background Contents
and choose, "Other". If you don't have this option,
I'll tell you a workaround in a second. Pick black
and click OK. If you don't have the
"Other" option, press Shift & the F5 key at the top of your keyboard.
to open the "Fill" window. Open the fly-out list
and click Black. At this point, if you're using a font,
type out the name using White for the color. If you're using
a signature, open the file that you scanned in.
Open your Levels window by pressing
Ctrl or Cmd + L. Drag the Input black to the right
and the Input white to the left.
This ensures that its black and white and it also gets rid of distracting specks.
Go to Select and Color Range.
Choose Highlights and click OK.
This will make a selection of the signature. To see it as a quickmask,
press the letter "Q" on your keyboard. We need to invert it,
so press "Q" again to make it back into a selection
and press Ctrl or Cmd + Shift + I.
Click the New Layer icon
to make a new layer. On this empty layer,
we'll fill the selection with white. Make sure your foreground and background
colors are black and white, respectively.
If they're not, click this icon. Since White
is the background color, press Ctrl or Cmd + Delete.
We can now deselect it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + D.
The signature is actually there. You just don't see it because it's white
on a white background. With your Move Tool,
click on the signature and drag it up
onto the tab of the black background that you created earlier.
Without releasing, drag it down onto the background
and then, release. If the name is too large or small,
Open your Transform Tool by pressing
Ctrl or Cmd + T. Go to a corner
and when you see a diagonal, double-arrow, press
Shift + Alt on Windows or Shift + Option on a Mac.
as you drag it in or out. Then,
press Enter or Return. Next,
we'll create an Action that will automatically remember the next bunch
of steps,
so you don't have to repeat the steps to create a Spirograph for
each signature. Click the Actions tab.
If you don't see it, go to Window and Actions.
Open the fly-out list and click
"New Set". Name it, "Spirograph"
and click OK or press Enter or Return.
Open the list again and this time,
click"New Action". Name it, "Spirograph 1".
Then, click "Record" or press Enter or Return.
Immediately, you'll notice that the "Record"
icon is now red. This is telling us that your steps will be recorded
until you click the "Stop" icon. It's important to note that it won't record the time
in between steps. It only records the steps themselves,
so, you can take as much time as you want in between steps.
Press Ctrl or Cmd + J to make a copy
of Layer 1, which is the signature.
Open your Transform Tool. You can choose to leave the anchor point in the center
or choose to drag it to another location within the Transform.
The location of the anchor, will change the look of your Spirograph.
When you rotate the Transform, the word or object
rotates around the anchor. I'll undo this last rotation.
Since there are 360 degrees in a circle,
go to the rotation field and type in a number that divides
equally into 360. Just remember:
the smaller the number you type in, the more compressed your Spirograph will be.
Since I typed in 20 degrees, the Transform rotated 20 degrees around
its anchor point.
To accept it, press Enter or Return.
We're going to rotate copies of the signature by pressing
Ctrl + Shift + Alt + T on Windows
or Cmd + Shift + Option + T on a Mac.
Continue to do this until your Spirograph is complete.
Next, we'll place all of the rotated signature layers
into a folder. To do this, scroll to the bottom signature
and Shift-click on it. This highlights all of the signatures.
Then, press Ctrl or Cmd + G.
To center your Spirograph on your document, press
Ctrl or Cmd + A to select the Spirograph
and click the "Align Horizontal Centers" icon
and the "Align Vertical Centers" icon.
Then, deselect it. We're ready to colorize it.
Click the Adjustment layer icon and choose
"Gradient". Click the gradient bar
and click on the gear icon to open your listed gradient presets.
Feel free to use any preset. For this example,
I'll click the "Spectrum" gradient.
Open the "Style" list. You have 5 styles from which to choose.
For this example, I'll click "Radial".
Change the Blend Mode to "Multiply"
and click the "Stop" icon to stop recording your actions.
The next Spirograph we do will use this action to automatically apply the steps
we used to create this one.
Click on the icon at the upper right corner of your Layers panel
and click "Flatten Image".
Go to Layer and Duplicate Layer.
Choose "New" and type in the name of your Spirograph.
Then, click OK or press Enter or Return.
You're finished Spirograph file is now added at the top.
To save it, go to File and Save As.
Save it as a Jpeg. To make another Spirograph with a different signature
click on the tab of your original Spyrograph document
and open your History panel. If you don't see it,
go to Window and History. Scroll to the bottom
and click "Blending Change" just above "Flatten Image".
Since we saved this Spirograph, we can now trash the top two layers.
I'll open up another signature and repeat the steps that we applied
earlier to the first signature.
As before, drag it onto the black background.
Open the Actions panel and scroll to the top.
Click "Spirograph 1" and the "Play" icon.
The action that we saved automatically repeats all the steps.
As before, we'll flatten the image,
duplicate the layer, click "New",
name it and click OK or press Enter or Return.
Let's see what happens when we use the same signature
and resize and reposition on the background,
drag the anchor to another location and change the angle.
As we did earlier, I'll center it and add color.
As you can see, this Spirograph looks totally different,
even though we used the same signature. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
Thanks for watching!