From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

803 An actual dream effect, in Photoshop

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

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803 An actual dream effect, in Photoshop

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Now, I don't know about you but every once in a while I wake up with what I call an occupational dream. Like I'm assembling a project file. Then I'll wake up and I'll try to go back to sleep and if I do, I end up having that same dream again. It's not restful, it's maddening. It's not like I wake up thinking, because we're going to be painting some lines with the brush tool. You do not have to be an artist however, and we will be creating this artwork from scratch. So let's start things off by going up to the File menu and choosing the New command here inside Photoshop. And you want to go ahead and switch to Art & Illustration so that you're creating an RGB image. I'm going to go ahead and set the width of my image to 2,940 pixels by the way. And then I'll set the height to 1,960, and the reason I'm doing this is because that happens to work well in our videos. You'll want your background contents to be set to transparent. And you may have to scroll down in order Which you can get by pressing the B key. Then right-click in the image window and we're looking for a hardness value of 100%, that's great. And each time you Shift + Click you are going to connect your click points with straight lines. So just keep Shift + Clicking around and about like so, and then come back to the guideline at a point. And then you want to press the right bracket key a few times until you increase the size of your brush to 10 pixels. Works quite nicely. And then you'll need to establish a new click point like so. And then just kind of Shift + Click along next to the guideline, like so. Now at this point you're going to want to zoom out because otherwise it's going to take you forever to create this brushstroke. But just keep Shift + Clicking. your little reference point matrix. And click on this left-hand point there, and that'll set your now ginormous target to this location here. You'll want to drag it down until it exactly aligns with the intersection of those two guidelines. Then go up here to this rotate value up in the options bar, and again if you're using the most recent version of Photoshop, you can do math, so I'll enter 360 divided by 24 because I want 24 lines in all. And then if I press the Tab key you can see that gets me an angle value of 15 degrees. If you're working in a version of Photoshop that doesn't do math, just set that value to 15 degrees and press the Enter key or the Return key on the Mac to apply that change. All right now I'm going to zoom out by pressing Control + Zero or Command + Zero on the Mac, and I'm going to repeat that transformation over and over again by pressing Control + Shift + Alt + T. That's Command + Shift + Option + T on the Mac. So all of the modifier keys at once. And that is going to repeat that transformation. Still inside my dream by the way. All right now what we want to do is apply a radial blur to all of these lines, which means we need to combine them into a single smart object. And you can do that by selecting all the layers and one way to select all the layers is to go up to the Select menu and choose All Layers. Or you can use that keyboard shortcut of Control + Alt + A, or Command + Option + A on the Mac. And now what you want to do is press the M key to switch back to the rectangular marque tool up here at the top of the toolbox. Then, right-click anywhere inside the image window and choose Convert to Smart Object. And I'm going to go ahead and rename this smart object first lines because later we'll be creating other ones. All right now what you'll want to do is go up to the Filter menu, choose Blur, and then choose Radial Blur. And you want to crank the amount value up to 100%, which is high as it goes. Although you can experiment with other values if you like. We're looking for a blur method of Zoom, and unless you want a noisy effect around the perimeter of your image, you should go ahead and set Quality to Best. Even though, notice when I click OK, that is going to be slow, especially on slower machines. But it's going to end up looking like this. All right I'm going to right-click on the filter mask as I so often do, and choose Delete Filter Mask to get rid of it, just to save some room on screen. Now we need a background for the effect. And so what I decided to do was go up to the Layer menu and choose New Fill Layer followed by Solid Color. And I decided to call this layer cyan because it will be approximately cyan. As soon as I enter in these values, 190 degrees, which is slightly off of the hue value, and then 100% for both the saturation and brightness values. And I ended up with this guy here which of course is covering up my effect so I'll go ahead and drag it down so that we can see the lines against that cyan background. And as you can see if I zoom in here we've got some very interesting action at the center of this effect, and it's going to get even better before we're done. All right now what I want you to do is go ahead and zoom back out so that we can see this next step. I'll click on the FX icon down here at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose Gradient Overlay. And this is the exact gradient I came up with but I better walk you through it. You want to click on a gradient bar right there and then set this very first color stop to that same shade of cyan. So 190, 100, 100 where the HSB values are concerned. I'll go ahead and click OK, and then you'll want to set this opacity stop up here at the top to zero percent. And then go ahead and create another opacity stop at 100%, and you can do that just by clicking like so. I don't want that guy so I'm going to drag him away. You do want this one at a location of 33%, and then that's it. You don't need that final opacity stop. All right now this guy, this color which is appearing at 33% has HSB values of 30, 100, and 100. So I'll go ahead and click OK for that. Then we've got this shade of purple right here at a location value of 77%. Which I always imagine is the opposite of 33, but that would actually be about 67%, but this works out fine. And so, I'll just go ahead and put that guy back there. His HSB values are 270, so it's violet, 100, and then 50, so a little darker than the other colors. Go ahead and click OK and this final guy by the way is just black, so zero, zero, zero. All right, cancel out for him, All right, cancel out for him, and what you want to do assuming that you're working and what you want to do assuming that you're working along with me, is go ahead and name this guy, COVK, along with me, is go ahead and name this guy, COVK, for Cyan, Orange, Violet, and Black. for Cyan, Orange, Violet, and Black. The key color black that is. The key color black that is. And then just go ahead and click New, And then just go ahead and click New, and that way you have that gradient for later. and that way you have that gradient for later. After which point I'll click OK in order After which point I'll click OK in order to accept that change. to accept that change. Now notice that the blend mode is set to normal, Now notice that the blend mode is set to normal, the opacity is cranked up to 100%. the opacity is cranked up to 100%. The style is radial and this step right here The style is radial and this step right here is very important. is very important. You don't want the angle value to be 90 degrees. You don't want the angle value to be 90 degrees. Notice what you'll get. Notice what you'll get. You'll want it to be zero degrees like so You'll want it to be zero degrees like so and then you want to crank that scale value up to 150%, and then you want to crank that scale value up to 150%, which is currently as high as it goes. which is currently as high as it goes. And then go ahead and click OK. And then go ahead and click OK. All right now I want to add another gradient All right now I want to add another gradient right here in the center, and it's going to bring out right here in the center, and it's going to bring out some of the detail as you'll see. some of the detail as you'll see. And so I'll go ahead and click on the first lines layer And so I'll go ahead and click on the first lines layer because I want to create this next layer on top of it. because I want to create this next layer on top of it. And I'm going to do so by going up to the layer menu, And I'm going to do so by going up to the layer menu, choosing New Fill Layer, and then choosing Gradient. choosing New Fill Layer, and then choosing Gradient. And I'm going to go ahead and call this guy brighter, And I'm going to go ahead and call this guy brighter, for lack of a better term. for lack of a better term. And then I'm going to click on this Gradient bar. And then I'm going to click on this Gradient bar. This is not the gradient we're looking for by the way. And so I'm going to go ahead and set this first color stop to white, and then click OK. And I want this first opacity stop to be 100%, just as it is. I also want this last opacity stop to be zero percent, which is fine, but I want to take this color stop right here and move it to a location of 50%. Now I don't want it to be black so double-click on it, and I'll change it to that same cyan that we've been using so far, which is H 190, saturation 100%, and brightness 100% as well. And then I'll go ahead and click OK. All right now you could either save this guy by giving it a name and clicking New, but I'm just going to click OK because we're only going to be using this gradient once. Now I'll change the style to radial once again. An angle value of 90 degrees is just fine, but I want to set the scale to just 15%, like so. And then click OK. All right now I want to give this guy a layer mask, so I'll drop down to the layer mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. And rather than clicking on it I'm going to Alt + Click on it in order to make the layer mask black. And that's because we just wanted to affect the very center of the image here. And so I'm going to go ahead and grab that brush tool once again, which you can get by pressing the B key. which you can get by pressing the B key. I'll right-click inside the image window, I'll right-click inside the image window, set the size value to 200 pixels, set the size value to 200 pixels, and then set the hardness to 50% this time. and then set the hardness to 50% this time. And then tap the D key to make sure And then tap the D key to make sure that your foreground color is white that your foreground color is white so that we can paint in some opacity here. so that we can paint in some opacity here. And I'll go ahead and align my brush cursor And I'll go ahead and align my brush cursor with the center of those guides. with the center of those guides. And if you're not seeing a cross by the way And if you're not seeing a cross by the way at the center of your cursor, then press Control + K at the center of your cursor, then press Control + K or Command + K on the Mac to bring up or Command + K on the Mac to bring up the Preferences dialog box. the Preferences dialog box. Click Cursors right there in the left-hand list Click Cursors right there in the left-hand list and turn on this guy, Show Crosshair in Brush Tip. and turn on this guy, Show Crosshair in Brush Tip. And so once you have that cross go ahead And so once you have that cross go ahead and align it at the intersection of those two center guides. and align it at the intersection of those two center guides. And click, like so. And click, like so. And that is going to dramatically reduce And that is going to dramatically reduce the size of the gradient because it's scaling to the mask. the size of the gradient because it's scaling to the mask. To fix that, go ahead and double-click on the gradient icon To fix that, go ahead and double-click on the gradient icon right there to bring up the Gradient Fill dialog box. right there to bring up the Gradient Fill dialog box. And turn off Align with layer. And turn off Align with layer. And that way we're restoring its original size. And that way we're restoring its original size. And now I'm going to drag it up and to the left And now I'm going to drag it up and to the left just a little bit like so, just a little bit like so, so that the highlight is off-center. so that the highlight is off-center. And then I'll click OK, and finally I'll go ahead And then I'll click OK, and finally I'll go ahead and change the blend mode for this layer and change the blend mode for this layer to Linear Add, which will produce this effect here. to Linear Add, which will produce this effect here. And it really helps to bring out some of the detail And it really helps to bring out some of the detail at the center of this effect. at the center of this effect. All right finally, I'll just go ahead and press All right finally, I'll just go ahead and press Control + Zero or Command + Zero on the Mac Control + Zero or Command + Zero on the Mac in order to center the image on screen. in order to center the image on screen. And I'll go to the View menu, choose Show, And I'll go to the View menu, choose Show, and then choose Guides. and then choose Guides. Or you can press Control + Semicolon Or you can press Control + Semicolon or Command + Semicolon on the Mac or Command + Semicolon on the Mac in order to turn off those guidelines. in order to turn off those guidelines. All right now I have to admit not every single element All right now I have to admit not every single element of this thing was part of my dream, of this thing was part of my dream, especially this top gradient right here. especially this top gradient right here. But otherwise this may be the only interesting effect But otherwise this may be the only interesting effect I've literally dreamt up in my life. I've literally dreamt up in my life. All right, this is cool, but meh, All right, this is cool, but meh, which is why if you're a member of LinkedIn Learning which is why if you're a member of LinkedIn Learning I have a followup movie in which we amp things up a notch I have a followup movie in which we amp things up a notch with still more lines, still more radial blurs, with still more lines, still more radial blurs, and then angled using the free transform command. and then angled using the free transform command. If you're looking forward to next week, If you're looking forward to next week, and you know, I recommend you do, and you know, I recommend you do, I'll show you how to take this effect I'll show you how to take this effect and make it that much better using Photoshop's and make it that much better using Photoshop's old school distortions applied as modern day old school distortions applied as modern day editable smart filters. editable smart filters. Deke's Techniques each and every week. Deke's Techniques each and every week. Keep watching. Keep watching.

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