dekePod

Today, I show you how to create brushed-metal text in Photoshop. I'd tell you more, but lynda.com content curator Colleen Wheeler did such a brilliant job of it that I figure I'll just turn you over to her:

This week's free Deke's Techniques falls into my favorite category of effects: those that create something from nothing. In this case, the "something" is elegant, cool, weighty letters that appear to be made of brushed stainless steel. The "nothing" is a window full of black pixels (to which you apply a couple of Photoshop filters to make a pattern), a few text and shape layers, some layer effects, and a couple of very important blend modes. Read more » 

This week, I show you how to render type in smoke. And happily, in addition to its reliance on the usual flexible construction of layers and smart objects, the effect is easy to pull off and you can edit the text any time you like.

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

Last week, I began what will be a series of five text effects in Photoshop. So if you like text effects, you're in luck! And if either text just isn't your bag or it somehow offends you---possibly thanks to some painful high school writing project (I had a few of those myself but I thankfully recovered)---come back on May 8 when we'll visit Adobe Illustrator for . . . another text effect!

Which means, today, I offer you a text effect. (If you didn't glean that, then I guess that high school writing project of yours was more painful than I had first imagined. Seriously, my condolences.) Specifically, I'll show you how to render text in grass, down to the finest blade, against a dirt background. Complete with a golf ball. Because that's how I play golf, on a dirt field adorned with small text-shaped clumps of fairway. Did I mention that I play miniature golf?

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

Today, I write you good people from the semi-tropical island of Maui, Hawai'i. Just yesterday, I visited the breathtaking 10,023-foot summit of Haleakala and bicycled down to sea level with my two sons. Today, we're off for an East Maui waterfall and rainforest hike. And then (sniff) home we go.

But I didn't forget my weekly obligation to loyal followers of this video blog. In which, in keeping with the theme of my semi-tropical vacation, I show you how to set text in bright green flora.

Plus, it's both effective and amazingly easy. Here's the official description from lynda.com: Read more » 

As if to prove to one and all how relevant I am, this week I do two things: I show you how to create a Star Wars hologram effect, circa 1976. And I do so in Photoshop CS6, circa last Wednesday. Never let it be said that I'm not the absolute embodiment of au courant, regardless of how stupidly old I am! Granted, I start this week's video with the words far-flung when everyone knows the line is far, far away. But that's for a very good reason. Which is that I . . . er . . . I'm sorry, was I talking or were you?

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