Photoshop for Yearbook
www.jostens.com
Embedding Text in Stone
A school was celebrating its 20th anniversary and looking for a graphic for
the yearbook cover that made it look like the school had been around for
ages. The staff wanted the 20 to look like it was set in stone. If you like the
look (see the After pic), here’s how to do it.
1. Find a background that is a photo of stone. Jostens has a number of them,
or you can take a photo of a stone or piece of marble. Open the photo in
Photoshop. (Figure A)
2. Duplicate the background Layer by typing Control (Command on a Mac) J.
3. Select the original layer in the Layers panel and make it editable by holding
down Alt (Option on a Mac) double-clicking on the layer name.
4. Then Choose Image>Adjustments>Levels (Figure B) and type a .5 into the center box. (Figure C) This will darken the original layer.
5. Select the duplicated layer and then grab the Type tool and choose a bold
serif typeface. Type a 20. I used Rockwell Extra Bold. You may need to
kern the 20 to move the 2 and the 0 closer together.
6. If you need to kern the numbers, place the cursor between them and hold
down the Alt (Option on a Mac) key and press the right arrow key until
they are where you want them.
7. Type Control (Command on a Mac) T and enlarge the 20 to be as big as
you want. Then center the 20 in the middle of the document.
8. Once you have the 20 typed the way you want it, hold down the Control
(Command on a Mac) key and double-click on the type layer name in the
Layers panel. This will make the 20 a selection.
9. Turn off the visibility on the type layer by clicking the eyeball next to the
name in the Layers panel.
10.Select the top stone layer, hold down the Alt (Option on a Mac) key and
click the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel.
11.You should now have a 20 that is filled with stone but darker stone. (Figure
D) Double-click the layer to bring up the Layer Styles dialog box. Choose
Bevel and Emboss. Change to: Outer Bevel, Chisel Hard, Depth=1000, Size
3, Softness 0. (Figure E) Before you close the Layer Styles, choose Drop
Shadow and change the Distance to 35, the Spread to 0 and the Size to
10. (Figure F) Click OK.
12.With the Layer Mask targeted, choose Filter>Distort>Ocean Ripple. Make
the two fields in the dialog box 15 and 4. Click OK. (Figure G)
13.Choose the Brush tool by clicking a B. Choose a 15 pixel brush. Choose
Window>Brush and click on Shape Dynamics. Set the Size Jitter to 25,
Control to Fade and make the Fade 200 instead of the default.
14.Go back to the Layer Mask and paint out from the numbers with black to
achieve a cracked look. Start inside the corners and brush outward. Since
you are painting on the layer mask, if you start inside the numbers, you
won’t have a problem.
15.You can draw a selection of an area with the Lasso tool and fill it with black
to make it look like the numbers are falling apart.
16.To finalize the effect, unlink the layer mask from the layer by clicking the
tiny link between the mask and the layer. Then type Control (Command on
a Mac) T and rotate the mask slightly. And there you have it. (Figure H)
B
A
D
C
E
G
F
After
Lesson 43
H