From the course: Photoshop for Designers: Filters

Create a logo with the flame filter - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop for Designers: Filters

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Create a logo with the flame filter

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- [Instructor] In this movie I'm going to show you how I created this logo using the flame filter. Here is my starting point. I have a layer of solid color and I have a layer of type. Just so that we don't need to concern ourselves with issues of missing fonts, I've converted this type into a shape layer. Just a couple of things about the Flame filter. It's found in the Render group, it cannot be applied as a Smart Filter. So to apply it non destructively we want to apply it on a new layer, above our content. And secondly, it has to be applied along a path. So if I just come and create a new layer above my content and then to Filter, Render, Flame, we see this error message. So we need a path first of all. Now the path I'm going to use is a custom shape, I will choose my Custom Shape tool, come up to my Shape picker, and I'm going to use this fire icon. Now if you don't see this, come to your cog and choose to load all of your custom shapes. So having chosen that, I will now draw that on my canvas. In this case I want to make sure that my behavior is set to Path rather than Shape or Pixels. I'll hold down the Shift key, so there is my path. And I now need to switch to my Path Tools in order to be able to move that around. Now we will see that if I go ahead and apply the flame filter to the part as it is the result is not a good one. Or at least, it's not what I was after. So I'll come to the Filter menu, Render, Flame, and then we have a number of different options, they're all interesting, but none are going to give me what I want with a single path the way it is. I ended up using Candle Light, but if I apply Candle Light along this one path, this is the result that I will get. Now the third option, Multiple Flames in one direction, that's interesting, but it's not what I want. So what I need to do is cancel out of here and first of all modify my path. I need to cut my path into three segments and then apply the flame to each of those three segments individually. This brings up the issue of how do you cut a path in Photoshop? and we have to use a work-around here because there is no scissors tool or equivalent, the way that you would find in Illustrator. I want to cut my path into three shapes. So we have the left flame, the right flame, and the center flame. If I come and choose my Direct Selection Tool and then click away and then click back on to the paths so that I can see the anchor points. If I delete that anchor point, then it may take out more information that you want. In which case, switch to your pen tool, and I press p in order to do that. Move over a segment of the path where there isn't already an anchor point. You will see a plus next to your pen tool. Click to add an anchor point. And now if I zoom in, switch back to the Direct Selection Tool I'll now select that path segment between the two, and I can delete that. So that's the work-around for how we can cut the path. Now I also want to do it here and here, and in this case, I don't mind that it's going to take out a segment of path, that's okay in this case. I'm going to click on that segment, and press Delete. And I'll do the same thing right here, I'll need to click away, click back, press Delete. And I now have three separate segments. But if I look on my path's panel, they are all still considered part of the work path. So I will need to deselect once again, I'm still in my Direct Selection Tool, hold down my Alt key or Option key and click on one of those three segments. Cut it, come to the bottom of the path's panel to create a new path, and paste it. Then go back to the work path, and let's do that again. Option or Alt, click, Command + X to cut, create a new path, paste it onto that path. And now it's probably a good idea to name these paths. Having done that I can return to my layers and I will need a new empty layer for each one of those path segments. I already have one, I'll come and create two more. And once again, let's name them. Coming to the center path. With that selected I'll come to the Filter menu, Render, back to Flame. And now we see the result of applying the Candle Light along this simpler path is much better than it was applying it along the whole path. In terms of the quality, obviously it's going to take longer to render fine quality than low quality, but it also gives a different look. And in my case, I actually prefer the strobe-like effect that low quality gives. So I'm actually going to choose low quality just because I like the look of it. I'll go ahead and click OK. I'll now repeat this process, come to the left layer, come to the left path. And back to my Filter, then I can just run the same settings again on that separate segment of path, and repeat it once more for the right-hand side. So there we see a work-around for how you can gain more control over using the Flame Filter.

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