chapter 2

Ah , Th os e D ar n Sw irls!

one of those things design element. Theyre just the ubiquity of swirls as a e like to just find them igner, theres just no escaping As a des and som to create their own swirls, of style. Some designers like a stock image of a swirl that never seems to go out , we ll take a look at using g both, but in this project re and use those. I like doin elsewhe our designs. s we can implement it into graphic and the different way

STEP ONE: Go under the File menu, choose New, and create a new document measuring 12 inches wide by 7 inches tall at 100 ppi. Then, select the Horizontal Type tool (T) from the Toolbox and click on the canvas to create a text layer. For this effect, its better to use a thick bold fontthinner fonts wont reveal the effect as much. Here, Ive typed the word iMAGiNE in Helvetica Black and centered it in the canvas area.

STEP TWO: Open the file of the swirly graphic. This one I found over on iStockphotos website (www.istockphoto.com). To get this shape into our layout, we need to first extract it from its background. So, go to the Channels panel (Window>Channels), press-and-hold the Command (PC: Ctrl) key, and click on the RGB channel. This will load the luminosity of the image as a selection. Since the image is straight black and white, it will select all of the white area, but we need the graphic selected, so go under the Select menu and choose Inverse.

ISTOCKPHOTO/CAJOER

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STEP THREE: Go to the bottom of the Layers panel and click on the Create a New Layer icon to create a new blank layer. Press ShiftDelete (PC: Shift-Backspace) to open the Fill dialog, choose White from the Use pop-up menu, and click OK. Now we have a white version of the original swirly shape. Press Command-D (PC: Ctrl-D) to Deselect.

STEP FOUR: Use the Move tool (V) to drag-and-drop this shape onto the document with the text. Press Command-T (PC: Ctrl-T) to enter Free Transform, press-and-hold the Shift key to keep it proportional, and scale the shape to fit on the canvas area. Also, make sure this layer is above the text layer in the Layers panel. Change the layers blend mode to Difference and this will invert the colors over the background elementskeeping the swirly shape white in the areas over the text, and black over the background area, even though the shape is still white. Press Return (PC: Enter) to lock in your transformation.

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STEP FIVE: Now lets add the swirly shape inside the text, but it wont look all that great on straight black text. Some layer style effects could work here, so click back on the text layer in the Layers panel to make it active, then click on the Add a Layer Style icon at the bottom of the panel and choose Gradient Overlay. Use the default Linear style with the Black, White gradient (choose it in the Gradient thumbnails Gradient Picker), but drop the Opacity down to 50% and change the angle to 40. Next, click on Stroke on the left to turn it on, and set the Size to 2 px and the position to Inside. Then, click on the Color swatch, set the color to black, and then click OK in the Color Picker, and again in the Layer Style dialog.

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STEP SIX: Click back on the swirly shape layer (the top layer) and press Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J) to make a duplicate of it. Change the blend mode back to Normal and then move this layer down just above the text layer in the Layers panel. Pressand-hold the Option (PC: Alt) key and click in between this layer and the text layer below to create a clipping mask. This will make the duplicate shape visible only inside the text area. Go into Free Transform mode, then press-andhold the Shift key, and scale the shape down, so more of it can be seen in the text. Click inside the bounding box and drag it to reposition it wherever it looks best, and then press Return to lock in your transformation.

STEP SEVEN: If youd like, you can make another duplicate of the original Difference layer, then scale it down and reposition it to add more swirls.

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STEP EIGHT: Now, you may be wondering what you can do with it at this point. You certainly have many options, but heres one to consider: With the top-most layer selected in the Layers panel, click on the Create New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the panel and choose Invert. This will make the text and swirls white and gray, while making the background area black. This allows us to make a selection of the entire graphic from within the Channels panel without having to flatten the file.

STEP NINE: Just like we did back in Step Two, in the Channels panel, click on the RGB channel to make it active (along with the others below it), then press-andhold the Command (PC: Ctrl) key, and click on the RGB channel to load the selection.

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STEP 10: Create a new layer in the Layers panel, then click on the Foreground color swatch, pick a dark purple color, and press Option-Delete (PC: Alt-Backspace) to fill the selection with the new color. Now you can take this top layer and drop it into any layout in any color you want. Be sure to save this file as a layered document, so you can modify and create new versions of the graphic in no time!

TIP: Turn It into a Brush You can also turn this graphic into a brush. Just skip the Invert adjustment layer step (Step Eight) and, instead, create a merged copy of all the visible layers by pressing Command-OptionShift-E (PC: Ctrl-Alt-Shift-E). Then, go under the Edit menu and choose Define Brush Preset. Now you can play around with some of the brush effects we saw in Chapter 1 to get some really interesting effects.

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Final Image

In this alternate version, I changed the Stroke layer styles color and changed the Gradient Overlay layer style to Radial. I also added a texture over the background and masked part of it out, then positioned a swirl in the background, below the text, but above the main swirl. Finally, I added a blue Hue/Saturation adjustment layer on top.

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