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Step
1: We'll start with a simple
brushstroke in Painter Classic.
I used the Big Coarse Hair
because I like the way the
Intuos Pen lets me go from
a thin stroke to a nice, fat
brush. (I like the name, too--
Big Coarse Hair sounds like
a trailer park garage band.) |
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Step
2: Open the stroke in Photoshop
and do a quick drag-and-drop
onto your Earth image. You'll
notice that the earth is hidden--
we need to get rid of all
that white. You can paint
a truly difficult layer mask,
or try the "Blend if Gray"
method, but I recommend… |
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Step
3: ...a free little plug-in
from edesign called "Eliminate
White." Download this from
www.edesign.com/filters, and
put it in your Photoshop Plug-ins
folder. Restart Photoshop,
and you'll see it in your
Filter menu. Select it, and… |
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Step 4: ...the Eliminate White
filter does just that. Now
you can size the brushstroke
to fit over the globe. |
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Step
5: Now we need to do a little
layer masking to make the
stroke look as if it's circling
the earth. Click on the little
box with a circle in it icon
at the bottom of the Layers
palette to make a layer mask. |
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Step
6: Paint in the layer mask
with black to erase the brushstroke,
and use white to bring it
back in. (For a more in-depth
look at layer masks, check
out Tip 2 in the Previous
Tips section). Use a small
brush to get in the little
areas and clean them up. |
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Step
7: Drag the completed layer
mask to the little trash can
on the Layers palette, and
hit the Apply button. |
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Step
8: Duplicate the Brushstroke
layer by dragging it onto
the little page icon on the
layers palette. This gives
us an exact duplicate to use
as our shadow onto the earth. |
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Step
9: Fill the duplicated layer
with Black, with Preserve
Transparency selected. Put
this layer between the Brushstroke
and Earth layers, and set
the shadow layer to Multiply. |
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Step
10: Don't worry, you're almost
finished. First, offset the
shadow layer a little, then
run a light Gaussian blur
on it. The last thing we need
to do is knock out the shadow
outside the Earth. The quick
and easy way to do this is
to select the white around
the Earth with the Magic Wand,
and then option-click on the
Layer Mask icon-- alt-click
for those of the PC persuasion. |
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Step
11: There you go-- sorta looks
like an Artists for Email
logo. |
