Jeff St John 
ePhotoPros Staff
The OC
Forum Fanatic
Posts:486
 | | 10/06/2008 9:37 PM |
| Well, it's that time of the year again. Chances are, many of you will have schools to photograph, and chances are, the kiddies will most likely be dressed in costume. I've been asked in the past to come up with a border for just such a function so I thought I'd come up with an easy five minute job (that still looks cool).
- The first thing I did was add a new blank layer above the pumpkin which I immediately filled with black (ALT Backspace to fill with foreground color, Mac: Option Delete).
- I then created a thin selection equally around the entire image (about a quarter of an inch all the way around).
- Next, I chose Select > Refine Edge and set the feather to around 17 px. I then simply pressed backspace to "punch out" the center of the black layer giving me a faded border.
- Next, on the pumpkin layer, using the lasso tool with a 2px feather, I made a loose, freehand selection around the entire image, leaving some extra space at the bottom for text. I then hit Backspace again to create the opening in the pumpkin.
- To give the edges of the opening a slightly withered look, I added an Outer Glow layer style, settings: Blend Mode - Normal, Size - 2, color - black.
- On a new layer under the pumpkin layer, I drew another loose selection (with a 1px feather) around the opening in the pumpkin, loosely following the shape of the pumpkin opening with the lasso tool.
- I then hit Shift CTRL I (Mac: Shift Command I) to invert the selection. Using the eyedropper, I sampled an orange from the pumpkin and filled the selection with said color. To add some texture to the "inner pumpkin" I added some noise set to gaussian and monochromatic (amount - 5). With the selection still active, I selected Filter > Blur > Radial Blur and set the radial blur to zoom with an amount of 35.
- At this point, the inner pumpkin was slightly transparent due to the blur effect so I added a layer underneath and filled it with black (all the while keep the selection active). I then selected the black layer and the blurred inner pumpkin layer and hit CTRL E to merge them. Finally I hit CTRL D to deselect.
- On the inner pumpkin layer I added an inner glow layer style with the following settings: Blend Mode - normal, Opacity - 50, Size - 21. This gave the inner pumpkin some depth and a touch more realism.
- Next, I added some text to the bottom of the document (the school name) over the larger area of the pumpkin. You may have noticed that the text, which was initially hidden behind pumpkin, instantly jumped up to the top of the layers palette. That was only me hitting CTRL ] a few times.
- I added another line of text (the event name) under the school name. Incidentally, the fonts I used were Copperplate Gothic Bold and Century Gothic (my favorite font, I know I'm a typography nerd).
- To the school name I added a slight drop shadow: distance 2, size 3, and a gradient overlay with orange as the darker color.
- I then just ALT dragged the drop shadow layer style to the event name text.
- To finish up the effect I dropped in a stock image.
This was a really simple design that stills looks pretty sharp thanks to a couple layer styles, namely, Inner and Outer Glow. I wanted to show that you don't have to use the uber-fancy tools all the time to achieve a good design. Here I mainly employed the lasso tool to give my pumpkin a carved effect. Add a couple layer styles to spice it up and Wammo, instant coolness. Have fun carving those digital pumpkins!
jefe
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