Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show you how to create the look of gold leaf on leather.
I provided two images that you can download.
One is this leather texture and the other is this high-contrast, black and white graphic.
Their links are in my video's description or project files.
Feel free to use another black and white graphic if you like.
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First, we'll place the graphic onto the leather texture.
With your Move Tool active, drag it onto the tab of the leather texture.
Without releasing your mouse or pen, press and hold the Shift key as you drag it down and release.
Pressing Shift kept the graphic centered over the leather document.
To ensure that your graphic is pure black and white, go to Edit and Auto Contrast.
This darkens the darkest pixels to pure black and lightens the lightest pixels to pure white.
To resize your graphic, open your Transform Tool by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + T. Go to a corner.
If you're using CC 2019 or later, press and hold Alt or Option as you drag it out or in.
If you're using an earlier version, press and hold Alt or Option + Shift as you drag it.
Make it approximately this size, since we'll be needing this much of the leather surrounding
it after we angle it perspective later.
To accept it, press Enter or Return.
Next, we'll create a displacement map of the leather texture that we'll use to make our
graphic look as if it's conforming to the contours of the leather.
Temporarily, hide the graphic and make the leather active.
Make a copy of it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + J and remove its color by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + Shift + U.
We'll brighten it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + L to open Levels.
Drag the Input Highlights anywhere between 90 and 100.
Since displacement maps look best when they're slightly blurred, go to Filter, Blur, and Gaussian Blur.
Blur it 2 pixels.
In the Layers panel, open the fly-out list and click "Duplicate Layer".
Open the Destination Document list and click "New".
Name it, "Displacement".
Notice, it created a new document which we'll save.
Go to File.
If you're using CC 2021 or later, click "Save a Copy".
If you're using an earlier version, click "Save As".
Save it to your Desktop for easy access as a Photoshop PSD file.
Then, click "Save".
If you see this message, just click OK.
Now, we can close the Displacement file.
When you see this message, click "No".
Delete the background copy since we don't need it anymore.
Press the "Delete" key.
Click the New Layer icon to make a new layer above the active layer.
Check your foreground and background colors.
If they aren't black and white respectively, press "D" on your keyboard.
We'll invert the colors by pressing "x" or by clicking this icon.
Click the foreground color to open the Color Picker and in the hexadecimal field, type in B27D29.
Then, click OK or press Enter or Return.
Notice our foreground color is now the color we just typed in.
Go to Filter, Render, and Clouds".
We'll convert it into a Smart Object, so we can modify it non-destructively.
To do this, click the icon at the upper, right and click "Convert to Smart Object".
Go to Filter and Filter Gallery.
Open the Distort folder and click "Glass".
Make the Distortion: 18, the Smoothness: 4, the Texture: Frosted, and the Scaling: 200%.
Alt or Option-click the eyeball icon next to the graphic which makes it the only visible layer.
Make the graphic active and open your Channels panel.
If you don't see it ,go to Window and Channels.
Ctrl or Cmd-click any of the channels to select the shapes of our graphic.
Press the Delete key to delete the white background behind our graphic.
Deselect it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + D. Invert the graphic to white by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + I.
Convert it into a Smart Object and go to Filter, Distort, and Displace.
Displace it 2 pixels, which is just enough to contour our graphic to the leather texture.
Tick "Stretch to Fit" and "Repeat Edge Pixels".
Click the Displacement PSD file you saved earlier and click Open.
Let's collapse the smart filters to save some space in the Layers panel.
Make the other two layers visible and with the graphic still active, change its Blend Mode to Overlay.
Ctrl or Cmd-click the thumbnail of the graphic to select its shape.
Shift-click the gold leaf texture to make it active, as well
and press Ctrl or Cmd +G to place the two layers into a folder.
Click the Layer Mask icon to make a layer mask of the selection next to the folder.
The white shape of the layer mask is revealing the contents of the folder onto the leather background under it.
Shift-click the leather texture to make it active as well and convert the two layers into a Smart Object.
Make a copy of it and open your Pen Tool.
Click approximately here, release and click approximately here to create your first path.
Continue this to create paths that approximate this shape and size.
Complete the path by clicking back on your first anchor point.
Right-click or secondary-click directly on the path to open the fly-out list and click "Make Selection".
Feather the Radius: 100 pixels.
Click the Layer Mask icon to make a layer mask of the selection.
Click the Adjustment Layer icon and click "Curves".
We want the adjustment layer to affect just the one layer beneath it.
However, since adjustment layers affect all the layers below them in the Layers panel,
we'll need to clip it or restrict to the one layer below it.
To do this, click the Clipping Mask icon or go to Layer and "Create Clipping Mask".
Place your cursor on the middle of the grid and drag it up and over to approximately here
to brighten the mid-tones of our image.
Make the bottom layer active and click the Adjustment Layer icon.
Click "Curves" again.
Go to the center and drag the diagonal line down to approximately here to darken the mid-tones of our image.
Next, we'll resize, angle, and rotate our image.
Click the curves adjustment layer to make it active and make a new layer above it.
In this layer, we'll make a composite snapshot.
Press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E on Windows or Cmd + Option + Shift + E on a Mac.
Open your Transform Tool and press Ctrl or Cmd and the minus key on your keyboard a few times to zoom out.
Go to a bottom corner and press and hold Ctrl + Alt + Shift on Windows
or Option + Cmd + Shift on a Mac as you drag out.
Go to a top corner and press and hold Alt or Option on later versions
or Alt or Option + Shift on earlier versions as you drag it out.
To rotate it, hover your cursor near a corner and when you see a curved, double arrow,
rotate it to an angle you like.
To fit it onto your screen, press Ctrl or Cmd + 0.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. Thanks for watching!