Tutorial Run : Outer Space Text Effect

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"Computers are my best friends. When I help people find each other without knowing they used a computer, my best friends and I revel in our little secret!" -Langel

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Tutorial Run : Outer Space Text Effect

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Tutorial Run : Outer Space Text Effect

Friday, October 23rd 2009 4:59pm

Most times, when I stumble onto a photoshop tutorial, I just skim the process and try to remember the inspiring tidbits. But this time around it looked like a fun, quick exercise. Outer Space Text Effect was published by JadGraphics.

Full Resolution 1900x1200 3.63mb

Overall, I diverged from the tutorial slightly. Instead of the starfield suggested I gnabbed a favorite Hubble string of galaxies photograph. For the text — I created a Gaussian blurred shadow layer to help with contrast against the galaxies, and opted for a radial blur for a motion effect instead of a solar flare.

In this tutorial, I learned how to stroke a path. I've drawn paths before in Illustrator, but the pen tool is auto stroked using vector based imaging. The pen tool in Photoshop can draw both objects and paths? It was all news too me. Sometimes I feel that Photoshop has buttons and settings in arbitrary places. Could you imagine there being both a 'shape pen' and a 'path pen' instead of two tiny buttons at the top of the screen?

And I am so glad I did discover how to make paths! You can bend the anchors, making nice, sexy curves. The 'stroking' of the path is the same as dragging a brush along said path on the selected layer. The brush settings are extremely versatile. I look forward to experimenting with this in future projects.

posted by Langel