High Tech Look

with pse 8
This technique has actually been used by the NFLs Chicago Bears on their website. It works great when
you only have one photo, but you dont want that one photo look. Plus in this technique youll learn a
pretty cool trick for varying the amount of a filter (in this case the Halftone Pattern filter) below the lowest
setting the filter will allow. Youll also learn a cool way to use the Wind filter.

Step 1
Start by going under the File menu,
choosing New and creating a new
document that is 800x600 pixels at
a resolution of 72ppi. Open the
photo of the football player from the
HandOut Directory. I already
selected the running back and put
him on his own layer, so hes all
ready to go.

Step 2
Get the Move tool (V) and drag the
layer over to your main document,
positioning him like you see here.
Now, get the eyedropper tool (I),
and click it once on a lighter area of
his pants (as shown here) to make
that colour your foreground colour.

Step 3
In the Layers panel, click on the
background layer, then fill this layer
with that blue foreground colour by
pressing Alt-Backspace, so your
background is solid blue (as seen
here).

Adapted from: ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS4 DOWN & DIRTY TRICKS by Scott Kelby c 2009.

Step 4
Go under the File menu and create
a new document that is much
larger than your existing document
(our existing document is 800x600
pixels, so create a new one that is
at least 1152x864 pixels or larger).

Step 5
Click on the Create a New Layer
icon at the bottom of the Layers
panel to create a new blank layer.
Click on the Foreground colour
swatch, set a medium gray as your
Foreground colour, and then fill this
new layer with gray using the same
shortcut you used to fill the blue
Background layer in the other
document.

Step 6
Go under the Filter menu, under
Sketch and choose Halftone
Pattern. When the dialogue
appears, from the Pattern Type
pop-up menu on the right, choose
Line (as shown here), then leave
the Size set to 1 (to get the
smallest lines) and set the Contrast
to around 23. Click OK and it
applies the lines to the layer.

Adapted from: ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS4 DOWN & DIRTY TRICKS by Scott Kelby c 2009.

Step 7
Get the Move tool and click-anddrag your gray-lined layer on your
larger document over onto your
smaller document. It will be way
too big to fit fully in your document,
so youll have to use Free
Transform to scale it down to fit,
which actually shrinks the size of
the lines and the width between
them quite a bit (this trick allows us
to get a finer setting than the
defaults in Photoshop normally
allows). Press Ctrl-T to bring up
Free Transform. Then press Ctrl-0
and the window will resize, so you
can reach the Free Transform
handles (as seen here). Grab a
corner point (confirm you have
Constrain Proportions checked)
and drag inward to shrink your
lines, so that you have thinner, finer
lines (not a bad trick, eh?). Press
Enter to lock your transformation.

Step 8
Now at the top of the Layers panel,
change the layer blend mode of
this layer to Soft Light (so it blends
with the darkblue background
below it) and then lower the layer
Opacity to around 30% (as shown
here).

Step 9
Click on your football player layer in
the Layers panel and then press
Ctrl-J to duplicate the layer. Bring
up the Free Transform again, grab
and hold a corner point and drag
out until the copy of the player is
really huge (like you see here). To
get this size youll probably have to
shrink your image size (press
Ctrl+- [minus sign] to zoom out),
then grab the bottom-right corner of
the image window and drag out so
you see the gray area around the
image. Then drag the Free
Transform corner point way, way
out until the top half of the player
fills the image, like you see here.
Now, press Enter to lock in your
resizing.

Adapted from: ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS4 DOWN & DIRTY TRICKS by Scott Kelby c 2009.

Step 10
In the Layers panel, drag this giant
player layer behind your lines layer,
then press Ctrl-Shift-U to
Desaturate the layer. Next, change
the layer blend mode to Soft Light
and then lower the Opacity of this
layer to around 40%.

Step 11
Now youre going to add a glow
around your player, so in the Layer
panel, click on the top player layer
to make it the active layer, then
click on the Effects panel and
choose Outer Glow from the drop
down menu, and choose Simple
from the thumbnails. Click on the
fx in the Layers panel on the active
layer. When the dialog appears,
click on the colour swatch and
change your glow colour to white,
then increase the Size (the amount
of Glow) to 16 (as shown here) and
click OK to apply a white glow
around your player (also shown
here).

Step 12
Youre now going to add a
windblown effect to the edges of
your player, but we want to do this
on a duplicate layer of our player
(youll see why in the next step), so
duplicate your player layer. Now,
delete the Outer Glow effect from
this duplicate layer by clicking
directly on the fx and unchecking
the Outer Glow box in the dialog
and clicking OK, which removes
the effect from this layer (you can
right click on the layer in the Layers
panel and choosing Simplify from
the drop down menu at this point,
to make the fx icon disappear).
Next, go under the Filter menu,
under stylize and choose Wind, for
Direction, choose From the Left (so
the wind appears to blow from left
to right) and click OK. Now, to get
a more intense effect, reapply that
same filter with the same settings,
by pressing Ctrl-F.

Adapted from: ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS4 DOWN & DIRTY TRICKS by Scott Kelby c 2009.

Step 13
To soften the harsh edges of your Wind
effect, go under the Filter menu (top
taskbar), under Blur, and choose Gaussian
Blur. When the Gaussian Blur dialogue
appears, set the Radius to 0.3 pixels (onethird of a pixel), then click OK. This little bit
of a blur does a nice job of softening those
rough edges. Now Ctrl-click the original
players layer thumbnail to load a selection
around the player (but it doesnt select the
Wind effect, because that appears outside
the players body). Press
Delete/Backspace and it erases your
duplicate player, leaving just the wind in
place, which gives you the look you see
here. Now Deselect by pressing Ctrl-D.

Step 14
Now lets add some text. Get the
Horizontal Type tool (T), set your
Foreground colour to white and type in
BOMBERS in a thick bold font (I used
Arial Black at 145 points), press Enter to
commit the text. Rotate the text sideways
by going under the Image menu, under
Rotate, and choosing Layer 90 Right.
Press Ctrl-0 to automatically zoom your
image so that you see the whole bounding
box around the text, then switch to the
Move tool (V), click on the top centre
selection point and drag the text down to fit
the image (as seen here). Drag this text up
against the right side of the image and then
lower the Opacity down to about 10%. So
this text appears beneath the player, clickand-drag this Type layer beneath the
player layer in the layer stack. Click on the
top layer in the layer stack and now add
the regular text up top (the word
BOMBERS is in Arial Black again, 96
points and the second line of text is Arial
Narrow 36 point). Get the Move tool again
and squash the BOMBERS text. Select
the topmost of these two text layers in the
layer panel and press Ctrl-E to merge the
two layers into one. Choose Drop
Shadows from the Effects panel menu to
add a drop shadow to your newly merged
text layer. Click on the fx in the layer panel
to make the dialogue appear, increase the
Size amount to 8 and click OK.

Adapted from: ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS4 DOWN & DIRTY TRICKS by Scott Kelby c 2009.

Step 15
With everything in place, the
background image (the larger
version of the player) looks too
light, so go to the Layers panel,
click on that layer and raise the
Opacity up to 40%. Finish things
off with a few more lines of text
(the players name, stats, etc.)
I did all of this with the Arial
Narrow font at different
opacities, which is a very
popular choice when you want
things to look high tech and
you see it used in video games,
sports graphics, etc., pretty
frequently. Heres the final
image with the rest of the text
added.

Adapted from: ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS4 DOWN & DIRTY TRICKS by Scott Kelby c 2009.