Top Tip Tuesday – Easy Squeezy

By TipSquirrel

Hello all. Tuesday rolls round again and it’s time for another” Top Tip”. To newcomers to the site, firstly hello, but I should also make you aware that I’m not a trainer. So expect nothing. That said, I hope you enjoy it.

Out Now

Photoshop User TV – Episode 190

“Scott, Dave and Matt share some tips and tutorials with the audience, and with each other.”

Tuesday Tip – Easy Squeezy

I saw a picture on a balloon recently where the number 18 was being held together by a ribbon. A bear was then trying to peek through the numbers, thus pushing them apart.

This started me thinking about the effect and after several ideas here’s what I ended up with;

Not a bear of ribbon in sight, but I think you can see me train of thought. Anyhoo… Here’s how I made it;

01_start

Now I need to start squashing them, so I’m going to squash them horizontally using the character palette. You can get to it from either the icon on the right or via the menu.

Window > Character

Altering this figure will increase (higher number) or decrease (lower number) the space between letters. Here I’ve had to do two separate procedures to close the letters up.

Now I need to distort the letters so that they look squeezed vertically and horizontally. Luckily there is a built in effect.

Pressing Ctrl+T gets me into free transform but looking up to the top at the tool menu there is a little Warp symbol. I click that, then move over to the left where I can, from the drop down menu, choose “Squeeze”.

Using the handle on the top or the bottom I can increase or decrease the amount of squeeze. In this case I have squeezed it as much as is allowed.

Now it’s time for me to make the belt. Using the marquee tool I made a rectangle that was bigger than the text and filled it with brown.

Now I need to give it a bit of texture. So from the menu; Filter > Texture > Texturizer I can choose sandstone and have a dabble with the settings until I get it like I want.

Next I want to make the belt wrap the text so I need a mask. The easiest way to do this is to make a mask shape of the text, then fill in the gaps…

To do this I put the mouse over the text layer and press the Ctrl key. This changes the mouse to a symbol that lets me know I will be making a selection based on that layer.

You’ll notice that I don’t have to have that layer selected. With the belt layer still selected I click the Mask icon at the bottom of the layer palette.

This however masks the spaces in the text too. Easily solved, I just paint on the mask in black where I need to. No need to be very careful, no edges to worry about.

Because I made a mask, I could if I chose to, rotate the belt slightly. The edges would still line up nicely.

Ctrl+T to enter transform, then the Warp icon up-top, across to the drop down menu as I did before. This time though I chose Arch. Wrong way and far too much, so using the handle I dragged it to where I wanted it.

Hit enter to confirm and I’m starting to get there.

I’ll need another bit of belt, but rather than go through that again I drag the belt layer down to the New Layer icon to duplicate it.

This new layer needs the mask, but I need it to stay where it is while I move the belt. So I click on the little chain link between the two to un-link them. Thus they can be moved independently.

Now I can move the belt to the left. Because of the arch it doesn’t line up with the original, instead I get what I am after, a little kind of ‘flick’.

I need to tidy up the mask a little again as I did earlier, no major worries though.

I need a bit of depth to the belt ‘flick’ so I add a quick drop shadow.

12_drop_shadow

Adding little circular brush dabs to the mask also gives me the holes in the belt while maintaining the drop shadow. 2 in 1, my favourite! While I’m here I give a bit of shape to the end