Explore the process of modifying an image in Photoshop to meet client requests, specifically for a postcard project for Strategy Skylight. Learn how to select, move, and modify elements such as the title bar and text, change the color and font, add texture through layered images, and use the clipping mask and blending modes features.
Key Insights
- Image modification in Photoshop includes selecting and moving elements, changing fonts and colors, and repositioning elements based on client request. In this case, the title bar is moved to the top, the text is moved and its font is changed, and the title bar's color is modified to match the sky color in the image.
- To add texture to a title bar, import photos with texture and use the create clipping mask option. By doing this, the part of the image is constrained to the dimensions of the layer below, in this case, the title bar, which gives the title bar an added texture.
- Using blending modes and adjusting opacity, the texture can be blended with the title bar. In addition, a stroke can be added around the title bar edges to enhance its visibility. The image background can also be adjusted to ensure visibility of all elements, bringing the image modification to completion.
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In this video, we'll continue working on our postcard for Strategy Skylight. With our Photoshop file open, let's begin.
Many times when I'm working on projects such as this out in the field, I'll receive updated attributes or characteristics that need to happen within the image as requested by the client. In this case, let's work under the assumption that our client has requested the title bar be at the top of our postcard, as well as a little texture added to the title bar to make it more intriguing. This is an easy change that we can make, so let's begin.
First, we'll select the title bar, and next, with the move tool selected, we can simply click and drag it to the top. Remember, if we hold shift as we drag, it will lock it to only move vertically. We'll drag it to the top until we see the pink bar at the top, and release.
Next, let's move our title with our text up to the top as well. We'll click, and again holding shift, simply move it up. The next thing we want to do is we want to change this font.
To do that, we can go to our horizontal type tool, and click in the text, and hold CTRL A to select all of the text. Let's go to our font, and choose a new font. You can choose whatever font you'd prefer.
For me, I'm going to choose this font, as I think it looks a little more classic, and let's bump up the font just a little bit for our size. We'll leave it at 24, and see how that looks. That looks pretty good, so we'll leave it there, and finally, let's change the color of this bar.
We'll go back to our title bar, either selecting it with the move tool, or selecting title bar, and we'll change the color from our properties panel, and let's go to our color picker. I want to match it to the color of the sky behind it, so to do that, we could go and find it in our color picker, or with the eyedropper tool, we'll simply click on the sky, and click okay. We'll see that now our title bar matches the same color as the sky.
Let's hit CTRL S to save our work, and the next thing we want to do is add a little bit of texture to our title bar. To do this, let's import a couple of photos with texture, so that we can create masks, and add it to the title bar. We'll go to file, place embedded, and let's first start by adding our cracked wall texture, jpeg, and click place.
We'll drag it to the top, and hit ENTER. Let's import two more, file, place embedded. This time, let's do our pink blue texture, and click place, and again, drag it to the top, and hit ENTER.
And finally, we'll import one more. Let's place our abstract texture, and click place, and drag it to the top, and hit ENTER. As we can see here, we've now added three new textures, however, we want to constrain these textures only to our title bar, so to do that, we'll place them on top of the title bar, so that in the layers panel, all three are above, and let's hide these top two for now, so that we're only working with the cracked wall texture, and next, we'll right click cracked wall texture, and click create clipping mask.
What this essentially does, is it constrains the part of the image to the dimensions of the layer below, in this case, our title bar. Therefore, by toggling our visibility for our cracked wall texture, we can see that it's created a mask for the layer below for our title bar. Let's do the same thing with the pink and blue texture, and the abstract texture.
Now, we can toggle between the visibility of the three of these, to see which one we like the most. In addition, if we highlight all three of them, because they're at 100 opacity, we'll only see the top one. Next, let's blend this cracked wall texture mask, with the blue title bar below.
We can simply do this by going to blending modes, and we can choose a blending mode that's appropriate. You can choose whichever you prefer. For me, I'm going to choose lighten, and I'm going to drop the opacity down.
Let's put it at 50%. Hit ENTER. I like the look of this.
In addition, feel free to choose whatever texture you'd prefer for your title bar, and feel free to blend it and change the opacity as appropriate. For me, I'll stick with the cracked wall texture, and blend it at a lightened blending mode with opacity 50. For our final change to the title bar, let's add a stroke around the edges.
We can do this by selecting our title bar, and going to properties, we'll go to our stroke, and we can choose any color to do our stroke. In this case, I'm going to choose white. However, you can choose whatever color you'd prefer, and go into our color picker.
I'll select white, and select okay. It's not a very strong stroke right now, so let's increase the size in our properties panel, and we can drag our stroke until it's a good fit. In this case, I'm going to change it to four, and hit ENTER, and this looks like a good stroke.
In addition, I will want to look at how the stroke is aligned, and make sure that it's inside the parameters of the shape, rather than on the outside, where we would lose it outside of the postcard, or in the middle, where we lose half of the stroke. We'll make sure the align is on the inside, and now our stroke looks pretty good. As a last step, since these guides are no longer relevant, we'll remove them.
We can do this by going to view, and click clear guides. We now have a good looking postcard with our title bar, with texture, as well as a stroke around it. Let's make one more change in this video, and that is, we're going to be adjusting the Austin background image, so that we can see all of the buildings below the title bar.
We'll highlight Austin background, and hit CTRL T to transform our image. Next, we'll zoom out, and now that the title bar has no transparency, we have a little more room to work with our image. We'll drag down, until we're at the bottom of the title bar, and we can release here.
In addition, let's just align it up, so that it's centered within our postcard, and then I'm going to create a new guide at three inches, and highlighting our Austin background layer. I'll hit CTRL T again, to transform it, and even though the center of the image will not be even with the center of the postcard, I want to try and line up the circle in the middle of our image, to be relatively centered. I'll adjust that here, and that looks pretty good.
I'll hit ENTER, and let's hit CTRL S to save our work. In the next video, we'll be working with a logo on the bottom right hand of the image.