Today's tutorial is a step-by-step recounting of a recent Deke's Techniques in which Deke exploits the great exploiter: Andy Warhol. In other words, I'm exploiting Deke exploiting Andy exploiting art. And Photoshop is enabling us all. 

With this technique, you can take any portrait photo, choose any color scheme, and rip off, I mean pay homage to Warhol yourself. Or get your assistants to do it, because that's what cheaply produced Pop Art is all about. Maybe you too can sell your creation for $100 million. Or maybe you'll just enjoy the priceless gift of learning to effectively use blend modes in the pursuit of digitally manufacturing mass produced art. 

Read on see how to start your own Photoshop Pop Art Factory:  Read more » 

Happy Friday, my beloved dekeQuarians. Today, I thought I'd spend an inordinate amount of time making groovy graphics to demonstrate a relatively simple technique for making a Photoshop composition. With all the 60s-era art around here lately, I thought I'd whip up some Peter-Max-meets-the-Fifth-Dimension-in-my-head (or, "What passes for a Sixties feel from someone who only lived through half of that decade") -inspired images in order to show off the technique Deke shared in this week's free Deke's Techniques video. 

As I noted earlier this week, the technique leverages 1) the Load Files into Photoshop Layers command in Bridge, 2) the ability to increase the Canvas Size by a percentage value in Photoshop, and 3) the groovy alignment power of Photoshop's Move tool. As Deke promised, you can use his technique with any same-sized images, so I started with these six heavily layered (not to mention obsessively constructed) graphics in Bridge:

Read on to see how you turn these far-out fantasies into a meticulously aligned composite message of PEACE (embellished with an Arnold Boecklin Std-inspired peace symbol I coerced Deke into drawing for me, in order to fulfill my vision):  Read more » 

The other day when I was thinking about ways to not acknowledge Valentine's Day, I took a heart-shaped path created in Adobe Illustrator and started applying a bunch Photoshop layer effects to it---effects I basically lifted four Deke's Techniques (and one from our friend-in-Photoshop, Nigel French)---all of which were originally designed as text effects.  

But it had occurred to me that any layer effects you pile onto text in Photoshop can be just as easily applied to a shape. For the most part, I just took the instructions from Nigel and Deke, inserted the heart-shaped path we drew in Illustrator a few weeks ago into a new shape layer, and applied the layer effects to my shape instead of text. Here are the results: 
 

Although reminiscent of sitting around making valentines with doilies, glitter, and glue in my youth, this was much more fun and required much less clean up. Also, my mom never let me use flames.

And any shape will do, so if you want to turn your shamrocks to gold, your easter eggs to chocolate, or set a decidedly unsuspecting snowflake on fire, you're set for every holiday as long as you can create (or find) a path shape to use. 

Read on to see my notes and get links to the video instructions I used. Note, all but one of these techniques are documented in movies that are actually unlocked for everyone at lynda.com, (and if you need a free trial week for the fire project, you can sign up for one one at lynda.com/deke). Read more »