drop shadow

This week, I have two very special treats for you. The first is a video in which I show you how to employ Photoshop's Dissolve blend mode to create the effect of letters hand-carved into wood. The second is a blow-by-blow text description of the technique, complete with graphics, as written by the Content Curator for lynda.com, Colleen Wheeler.

It's an experiment, so we're eager to hear your thoughts. But I'm guessing you're  gonna like it. Take it away, Colleen:

In this week's free Deke's Techniques, Deke uses Photoshop to create the effect of hand-carved letters in a wooden sign. I don't mean embossing typed-out text into a wood background, but rather making hand-drawn letters look like they were manually carved many years ago into an old wooden sign and weathered over time. To create this effect, Deke uses a blend mode that's fairly uncommon: Dissolve. Because it results in old-style dithered edges, Dissolve is seldom used. But for this particular effect, it provides the gritty, worn edges that we're looking for.

I titled this week's post "Explained" because I thought I'd show you the steps to this technique right here in the blog post. Here's how it's done: Read more » 

One of the great things about Deke's Techniques (for me anyway) is that it gives me the chance to explore, not just how vast and powerful programs like Photoshop and Illustrator work, but how they work together, and in real-world scenarios. For example, this week, I show you how to take a couple of cloud photographs (Photoshop) and cram them into some vector-based text objects (Illustrator), replete with strokes and drop shadows.

Here's the official description from lynda.com: Read more » 

As I recorded this one, I worried it might be received as a bit lame. As in "Making a frame? Around an image? In Photoshop? With a drop shadow? Are you serious? WTF?"

But, on balance, in retrospect and stuff, it's actually a solid technique. Watch it if you dare. Meanwhile, here's the official description from lynda.com: Read more »