Wow, thanks for the great tuto­r­ial.

Thanks !

Wouldn’t it be far sim­pler to just output the logo on a sheet of 11 x 17 and then take a dig­i­tal pho­to­graph? This seems like a lot of work.

Thanks for the tuto­r­ial. I see I’ve been doing it the hard way. This method is much more effi­cient.

re: gary and lot of work. wow, excel­lent point! it’s far better to use tex­tured paper, a color printer you may or may not have access to, ink that costs money, and a dig­i­tal camera that can actu­ally pull off the depth of field accu­rately, instead of just mock­ing it up in Pho­to­shop first with a gra­di­ent mask and a filter and a 3D effect that you can manip­u­late numer­i­cally on your com­puter screen rather than taking the time to set up a tripod and a room and table to achieve the same thing.

gary, your man­ager called. he’d like to go over these “expenses” from your last project.

Wouldn’t it be far sim­pler to just output the logo on a sheet of 11 x 17 and then take a dig­i­tal pho­to­graph?

Def­i­nitely, but that would have made for a pretty boring tuto­r­ial isn’t it?

Step 1: Output logo on sheet of 11x17”

Step 2: Set up dig­i­tal camera on tripod with pro­fes­sional light­ing

Step 3: Take pic­ture

:-P

I love these kinds of tuto­ri­als on type. Please do more of these as there are many dig­i­tal type new­bies (such as myself).

In fact, if the series were expanded this would be the only web­site from all the main type sup­pli­ers that has prac­ti­cal type design infor­ma­tion (not just the rudi­men­tary stuff).

Thank you and more please,

Mike Diaz

i think some people leav­ing neg­a­tive com­ments are not real­iz­ing that this can be applied to more than just type. any graphic com­po­si­tion that you want to give some photo-​realism to can ben­e­fit from this tech­nique. thanks for always being will­ing to share your secrets, yves!

I don’t have a color printer or pro­fes­sional light­ing … and now that I think about it, I don’t have a table either. Just a desk (dorm­rooms in Man­hat­tan have no space for lux­u­ries like tables). But I know Illus­tra­tor and Pho­to­shop like the back of my hand. Love this tuto­r­ial. Wow. Excel­lent. Thank you.

This is really nice.

Spec­u­lar High­lights, like the name implies, manip­u­lates high­lights given off of a light source, spec­i­fied by alpha chan­nel (I assume) or its native source, which would explain why you didn’t see any change - your graphic/text is flat, it has no gra­di­ents on it.

Great tuto­r­ial and your type treat­ment is excel­lent. Thank you.

Rather inter­est­ing tech­niques. In my appli­ca­tion, when apply­ing the lens blur, I used 40 on the iris radius rather than 25 (as I am sure every­one can chose dif­fer­ent set­tings and yours are only an indi­ca­tion) but 25 was just too unno­tice­able and 40 looked dra­mat­i­cally better.

Thank you for the tuto­r­ial and look for­ward to the next one (or two or three!). Great.

Xandro.

In reply to Gary:

Wouldn’t it be far sim­pler to just output the logo on a sheet of 11 x 17 and then take a dig­i­tal pho­to­graph? This seems like a lot of work. (Posted by: Gary at Sep­tem­ber 19, 2006 09:06 AM)

In our case, Gary, we would have to charge the Client the output of the 11x17, then the pho­tog­ra­phy, then the retouch­ing etc. One can add to the job $250 on top of what was quoted if we where to follow your exam­ple. In today’s com­pet­i­tive envi­ron­ment, the tuto­r­ial can save the client a little bit of money which would be better spent some­where else.
Sorry to say.
Xandro.

Nice tuto­r­ial! Thank you!

Alas, I do not find the 3D effect — not in Pho­to­shop CS2 help, not in my Blatner/Fraser book, not in Google. Effect > 3D > Rotate… Do you have a custom filter installed? What am I miss­ing?

VB: the 3D effect is in illus­tra­tor. The tuto­r­ial starts out in illus­tra­tor and doesn’t move onto Pho­to­shop until the alpha chan­nel stage.

incred­i­ble!. thanks for the headsup. for all the old­skool­ers,… you guys stick with your ancient camera tech­niques. Instead, we all just progress with new quicker tech­niques that save time, money and a lot of hassle.

Wow - I always won­dered how to do that, and just stum­bled over this tip as I was buying a font. Went through the var­i­ous steps - and cre­ated a beau­ti­ful image no time. What a great effect! Thanks and keep them coming!

Sweet tip, real­is­tic look­ing effects! Well pleased with the final image.

Rea­sons for me not doing this with a camera and paper:

1: I do not own a camera that allows con­trol of focus (reflex)
2: No light­ing fix­ture either
3: This way you get to con­trol and change the image at your liking with­out repeat­ing the tra­di­tional process

LOL Thanks a lot for the tips, been won­der­ing how to use lens blur in PS for some time, now I know :D

This tuto­r­ial is great. For the part about the Radial Gra­di­ent back­ground in Illus­tra­tor, I would sug­gest to skip this part and bring the file into Pho­to­shop with­out the back­ground because you will have much more con­trol over cre­at­ing the actual back­ground depth once inside PS. This way you can edit the back­ground gra­di­ent on its own layer and get a little bit more “advanced” with it since IMO it’s a bit easier to create spe­cific gra­di­ents in PS. For instance, you can use two gra­di­ents, one for closer and one for far­ther away.

Oth­er­wise, nice tuto­r­ial.

Spot on! I recently just found your web­site (although I have known about fontshop for some time) and I am going through all of your posts like it is my job! (it kinda is) I am trying to figure out if I should share it or keep it!

This is ****ing cool. I never fig­ured I could do this. Now for a cooler port­fo­lio with­out having to find all the damn print sam­ples I’ve mis­placed.

Great tut..comments are also enter­tain­ing; much thanks.
This has so many prac­ti­cal uses… I was won­der­ing if you could go even further…like type dis­solv­ing into air (cloud) or water..ink dilut­ing from the water flood­ing it, or tex­tured onto objects like a shadow / dis­tressed.
Thank you so much!
Laurel

Per­fect timing! I’m in the middle of updat­ing my online port­fo­lio and will try this out tonight.

This tech­nique is great. It would also be really help­ful for busi­ness cards or other pieces where small details are impor­tant to show. Keep these tuto­ri­als coming!

Fur­ther on spec­u­lar high­lights: Perh­paps the most common exam­ple would be the intense, star­like reflec­tion of bright sun off a chrome car bumper. Since your exam­ple did not have any glass or chrome surfaces(and an appro­pri­ately placed light source), the spec­u­lar high­lights set­ting did not pro­duce any results.

Was there a hidden camera set up in my apart­ment the past 2 weeks I’ve spent with my camera and my port­fo­lio trying to “find other, more attrac­tive ways to present designs” because “flat just doesn’t cut it” for my dig­i­tal pre­sen­ta­tions? Were you watch­ing me moving lamps around the poorly lit room and bal­anc­ing on the rick­ety dining room chair to try to get that per­fect shot, which by the way never worked quite right?

*applause* thank you for this tuto­r­ial :D

@Peter Joseph: Finally, now I know. Thanks for that bit of infor­ma­tion. And in case some­body says: “You could have looked that up your­self.” … Yes, I could have. :P

@dsign­layd: Believe me, I know your pain. Why do you think I devel­oped this tech­nique? Glad there’s other people find­ing it useful. :)

I agree, this is fan­tas­tic! allows me to present port­fo­lio work in a more inter­est­ing way with­out need­ing to own pro pho­tog­ra­phy equip­ment, or worse, try and fob off the studio effect in my lounge room.

Very cool. I will try this out soon.

Great tuto­r­ial.

Read­ing through the process it seems quite com­pli­cated, but I am going to spend a little time to work through and I’m sure it won’t be too hard. The fan­tas­tic result has got to be worth a try, it looks great!

I can’t get it to work.
When I create a new Alpha Chan­nel what does the color indi­cate? What is the color I’m sup­posed to use and the opac­ity. The Alpha chan­nel just makes a gra­di­ent and that’s all I see. It’s like the Alpha chan­nel isn’t turn­ing into a Lens Blur. AH!

Got it.
I wasn’t on the cor­rect Chan­nel when doing the Lens Blur.

I can’t get this to work.
I’ve gotten up to the cre­at­ing a gra­di­ent in a new alpha chan­nel part. But when I use the lens blur filter noth­ing hap­pens. I’ve tried it on both the vector layer (which I ras­terised) as well as the Alpha Chan­nel layer but to no Luck. Also when I keep the alpha chan­nel layer on. I have a red tint across the screen I am work­ing in.

See the com­ment above yours.

I’ve read that, So what chan­nel Do I have to be on to get the lens blur to work? the Alpha Chan­nel?

Well, if you think log­i­cally you don’t want to apply a lens blur on that black-to-white gra­di­ent, but on your actual image. Select the image in the Chan­nel window and des­e­lect the Alpha Chan­nel with the gra­di­ent.

I still can’t get it to work. Nev­er­mind. Thanks for your help though.

Per­spec­tive, Yes. Pho­to­re­al­is­tic, no.

Com­ment, Yes. Enlight­en­ing, no.

Weee, super cool for pre­sen­ta­tions, with a little bit of tex­ture (fabric or paper).
Very simple yet pow­er­ful

10x