{"id":28589,"date":"2019-02-05T19:00:22","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T03:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/?p=28589"},"modified":"2019-02-04T13:26:21","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T21:26:21","slug":"tutorial-tuesday-photoshop-elements-87","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/2019\/02\/tutorial-tuesday-photoshop-elements-87\/","title":{"rendered":"Tutorial Tuesday (Photoshop Elements)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another Font-to-Alpha Option<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The idea for this technique came to me while I was using Nyquil to fight off a cold and was probably not really coherent. But it seemed like a stroke of brilliance at the time so I decided to try it. It didn’t work the way I saw it in my mind’s eye, but I like how it came out in the end.<\/p>\n

When turning a font into an alpha, bevels are very handy style tools but they don’t always give the look I want, being more sharply, blockily cut. I wanted to create a more curvy but smooth alpha with a paper clipped to it. So when it occurred to me that I could try using a rounded, beveled Style<\/strong> on my text then clipping the paper to that, I HAD to try it! Alas, it didn’t work the way I expected… I still ended up with a flat, 2-dimensional image. So I went back to the drawing board.<\/p>\n

This font, called Lovelings<\/strong><\/a> (by a designer named Darrell Flood) was found at 1001 Free Fonts<\/strong><\/a>. It’s got that solid, curved look that makes great alphas.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I’ve started to automatically make a copy of my original text layer before I make and adjustments to it, just in case I need an untouched one later.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Then I started trying my idea out. And failing. Miserably. More than once! But then I tried this and it worked, so you get to see it. On my TOP layer, I added a Layer Style<\/strong>\u00a0from Miss Mis Designs<\/strong><\/a>‘ Hustle and Heart<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I used the cherry-red acrylic style and didn’t make any adjustments to it at all. It looks pretty great, but it isn’t the effect I was after.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

So I turned the visibility for that layer off and went to the BOTTOM, original layer.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Then I dropped a patterned paper from I Believe in Love<\/strong><\/a> on top of the text. PSE in its later incarnations has an unfriendly habit of scaling objects to a single dimension (height) of the canvas, so it’s a pretty minuscule little swatch here.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

To overcome that I resized the paper to 400%<\/strong>. It’s easy to do precisely by clicking on one of the corner handles of the Bounding Box<\/strong>, which opens up the Transform<\/strong> menu, then simply typing in the dimensions I want.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Once I had the paper big enough to work with, I Clipped<\/strong> the paper to the layer below it. CTRL\/CMD>ALT>G<\/strong> is the WSNH<\/strong> shortcut, or Layer>Create Clipping Mask<\/strong> works too.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As you can see, the acrylic layer (visible again) is a little bit transparent and lets the paper show through. But not enough.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Easy enough to lighten the top layer some to let the paper show, but without losing the curvy, round effect of the acrylic altogether. I only decreased the layer’s Opacity<\/strong> to 80%<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

All that was left was to select and Merge<\/strong>\u00a0all the layers (CTRL\/CMD>E<\/strong> or right-click>Merge<\/strong>) and I was ready to create the rest of my siggie.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I’m going to keep trying to get a rounded bevel on a font that stays put when I clip a paper to it, and if I succeed, I’ll show you how I did it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another Font-to-Alpha Option The idea for this technique came to me while I was using Nyquil to fight off a cold and was probably not really coherent. But it seemed like a stroke of brilliance at the time so I decided to try it. It didn’t work the way I saw it in my mind’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[229,284,92,285,62],"tags":[373],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-11 02:16:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"private","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28589"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28589"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28602,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28589\/revisions\/28602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gingerscraps.net\/gsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}