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

976 Rendering your name in playing cards

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

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976 Rendering your name in playing cards

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- Hey, gang. This is Deke McClelland. Welcome to "Deke's Techniques". Today, we'll take a look at how you can render your name or any other word using regular old playing cards, but not real playing cards like these, infinitely customizable playing cards that you can create any way you like inside Photoshop. Now, if your name happens to be Jake, boy, are you in luck because that's where we're going to start. You're welcome, Jakes. But there are all kinds of other names you can spell. Consider that the face cards offer J, Q, and K. Plus, there's the ace. In French, you have the valet, dame, and roi. The numbers cover the values, E, I, and O. The five can pass for an S, the six for a lowercase B, or even a G or a P if you flip them. Or forget all that and enter whatever letters you like. In the end, I'll be converting Jake to my own name, where the D is the dame of diamonds. If your name is a little bit longer like Siegfried or Brunhilda, then the game of your name is the same. You'll just have to deal yourself a larger hand. Here, let me show you exactly how it works. All right, so there's a lot going on inside this composition, including a total of five groups over here, inside the Layers panel. I'm going to start by changing letter J to D. And so, I'll go ahead and grab the Type tool, which you can get by pressing the T key. And then, I'll select the J. Now, if you get a missing font warning, then you want to go to the Adobe Font site and activate this font right here, Peccadillo Eight. All right, but I already have that font in my system. And so, I'll just go ahead and change the J to a D, like so. now in French, the D stands for dame, meaning that we need to change this jack to a queen. And so I'm going to go ahead and turn off these top three groups, numbered, face card, and numbered right there, so we can focus on the jack. And I'll go ahead and zoom on into him as well. Now, if you're looking for face cards, then one option is to check out the Dreamstime Image Library. Got a URL right here for you. And then, you can enter any one of these ID numbers. So for the diamonds, it's going to be 28669060, and so forth. Or of course, you could just capture your own cards if you have a deck sitting around. I went ahead and shot these cards with my iPhone. And then I applied a levels adjustment layer in order to enhance the contrast on a channel by channel basis. And so notice if I double-click on this thumbnail here, and I switch from RGB to red, for example, I've got one set of modifications where I had to change it to green, I'll see a different set and so forth. In any event, assuming you have access to this exercise file, you can explore that as you like. But I'm going to go ahead and switch to this image right here. Again, it comes from Dreamstime. And armed with the rectangular marquee tool, I'll at first zoom in a little bit. And then I'll just go ahead and select this region right here. So you want to select pretty tight on the inside edge of that blue boundary. And I'm going to use the space bar in order to move my selection outline on the fly. And you just want to select the top portion of this card, like so, and then go up to the edit menu and choose the copy command. Or of course, you could just press control + C, or command + C on the Mac. And then I'll go ahead and switch to my composition in progress. Notice that my face card group has expanded open. So I'll go ahead and click on the item that's called jack diamond, and I'll show you how I created that diamond symbol and just a moment. And I'll return to the edit menu and choose the paste command. Or you have that shortcut of control + V, or command + V on the Mac. And now, I want to move this guy into a better location by pressing the control key or the command key on the Mac, which allows me to access the zoom tool on the fly. Now, I don't want this big diamond right here. And so I'm going to grab the lasso tool, which you can get by pressing the L key, and I'm going to press and hold the alt key or the option key on the Mac. And that way, I can click with the polygonal lasso while that alt or option key is down. And I'll just click around that diamond, like so. And then I'll just delete it. You could mask it away if you want it to be really, oh, so careful, but I'm just going to press the backspace key or the delete key on the Mac in order to get rid of it. And then I'll press control + D, or command + D on the Mac, in order to de-select the image. And so notice that the image aligns with that blue horizontal line right there. Now, what you want to do is change the blend mode to multiply so that the queen blends with the very light gray card in the background. All right, now, of course, at this point, we're seeing the jack at the same time. So I'll go ahead and turn the jack off, like so. And then I'll rename this layer queen, and now I need a diamond side. And to get that, here on a PC anyway, I can go to the character map utility. And then, assuming that you have access to character map, you want to scroll way down the list of characters until you see these guys right here. And then just double-click on the diamond in order to add it to this field right here. Select it and then click the copy button. And now, you can switch back to Photoshop. Double-click on the word queen right there. I'll enter a space character, and press control + V or command + V on the Mac in order to paste that character like so. Now I want to mask it inside the card. And so, I'll press the alt key, or the option key on the Mac, and click on that horizontal line underneath the queen layer here, inside the layers panel. And that will clip the queen into the card. All right, now turn on the first numbered group right here so that I can see which part of the queen is exposed. I want to see a little more than that. And so I'm going to press control + shift, or command + shift on the Mac, along with the left arrow key a couple of times in order to nudge the queen to the left. And you press the control key, by the way, or the command key on a Mac, so that you're accessing the move tool on the fly. Of course, you could just switch to the move tool if you prefer. All right, now, I'm going to switch back to the type tool. Again, you get that tool by pressing the T key, and then I'll select the A and change it to a three, like so. All right, now, I'll go ahead and bring up the next face card group, which includes this king, which is just fine. But let's say I want to switch this guy from the king of hearts to the king of diamonds. In that case, just go ahead and collapse the numbered and face card groups right there. And then expand the top face card group, and click on the king of hearts layer right there. And now, I'll go ahead and bring up this image. I'll zoom in on it as well. And then, I'll grab my rectangular marquee tool, which you can get by pressing the M key. And I'll marquee just inside of that blue outline right there. You don't have to get it exactly right. Just go ahead and try to be as accurate as you can and then press control + C, or command + C on the Mac, to copy that selection. Then I'll switch over to the composition in progress and press control + V, or command + V on the Mac, in order to paste the new king in front of the old one. And then, I'll switch to the lasso tool by pressing the L key. Press and hold the alt key, or the option key on the Mac, and click around the diamond in order to select it. And then press the backspace key, or the delete key on the Mac, to get rid of it. And now, press control + D, or command + D on the Mac, in order to de-select the image. All right, now you want to, once again, clip that layer inside the card, which is a vector-based shape layer by the way. And so I'll press the alt key, or the option key on the Mac, and click on that horizontal line below what is currently called layer one. And then I'll press the V key to switch to the black arrow tool. And I'll drag this guy into a better location so that the top of his crown snaps into alignment with that horizontal blue line. And then, I'll change the blend mode to multiply once again, so that I'm burning the image into the card. And I'll turn off the king of hearts layer. Now I need to rename it once again. I'll just go ahead and do it by switching the character map, clicking the copy button right there, switching back to Photoshop. Double-clicking on the name of that layer and renaming it, king, and then control + V, or command + V on the Mac, in order to paste in that diamond. All right, now, I no longer want this symbol right here to be a heart. And even though it's going to get covered up, I want to go ahead and replace it with a diamond. And I'll do that by switching over to Illustrator right here. And notice that I've drawn these symbols in advance. I'll go ahead and click on the smaller diamond, and I'll press control + C, or command + C on the Mac, to copy it. Then I'll switch back to Photoshop. I'll twirl open this inset group right here that's called R suits, meaning right suits, right-hand suits that is. And I'll click on the heart layer. And I'll press control + V, or command + V on the Mac, in order to paste the diamond in front of it. Photoshop is going to ask me how I want to paste this path outline. I want to paste it as a shape layer because after all, the entire shape is going to be filled with red. After which point, I'll click OK to accept that change. And then, I'll go the Edit menu and choose Free Transform, which has a keyboard shortcut of control + T, or command + T on the Mac. You may wonder why in the world I'm doing that. And that's because I want to scale the diamond. So I'll select the width value, make sure width and height are linked into alignment with each other, and change this guy to 64%. And then press the enter key, or the return key on a Mac, a couple of times to invoke that change. And now, I'll move the diamond so that its bottom is aligned to the bottom of the heart, right there. I'll turn off the heart layer. I'll rename this layer diamond just because I want to be tidy. And then, I'll change the blend mode, once again, to multiply in order to burn the diamond into the card. All right now, turn on the numbered layer, which is still a three. So that's going to work out beautifully. Notice this three is a heart, and this three is a diamond. So that's going to work out nicely. I'm going to click on the king-diamond layer right there. And with my move tool still active, I'll press shift, along with the left arrow key a couple of times to nudge that guy into a better location. I didn't have to press the control key or the command key this time around. And that's because the move tool is already selected. And now, I'll press control + 0, or command + 0 on a Mac, in order to center my zoom. And I'll go ahead and twirl close that face card group. And that's how you spell your name in playing cards. Of course, you can use more than four cards if you like, and feel free to use characters that actually appear on playing cards, such as R for roi, as well as characters that don't. If you're a member of LinkedIn Learning, I have a followup movie in which I show you how to precisely scale a shape layer inside Photoshop to create an industry standard, 2 1/2-inch wide, oops, by 3 1/2-inch tall playing card with just the right amount of round corner. Come play a game of "Deke's Techniques" each and every week. By which I mean, keep watching.

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