Kamis, 02 Februari 2012

Create Convincing Text-Shaped Buildings in Photoshop

Creating convincing buildings that appear like text in a cityscape can be a challenging task. In today’s tutorial we will learn how to create building-shaped typography in Photoshop using photos that you have taken yourself. Let’s get started!

Tutorial Assets

You may download the photos that were used in this tutorial for free from the link above.

Before You Begin

It is most fun to use your own photos for this tutorial. Feel free to use the ones provided, but you will feel much more satisfied when you use your own. If you decide you use your own, there are some things that you have to take into account. The first is to go to (one of the) highest building in a city with high rising buildings (more than 10 floors). Any capital in the world will do, except Amsterdam and Ouagadougou. Higher buildings are more spectacular. Take shots of complete buildings, of parts of buildings, take shots of streets, parks, pedestrians, cars, satellite dishes, antennas, rubbish baskets, take shots of everything you see. Zoom in to roofs and take shots of the small constructions on top, of laundry lines. You will be surprised how different things are on each roof. Use a reasonable zoom lens for some of the shots. When you start creating the image, you will get all kinds of ideas on small details and how to use them. Don’t be stingy with using your camera memory when you are on the roof; take loads of pictures.

Step 1- Nairobi Skyline

Create a white background image of 6000 x 6000. Save it as nairobifull.psd. Open Nairobi_skyline.jpg, copy it to Nairobifull, rename it to Nairobi background and drag this image as in the photo with the move tool (V). Make the horizon horizontal (turn it -2degrees or so) and drag it to the top of the working space, leaving the sky out of the image. Hit return (confirm).

Step 2 – Putting it in Perspective

Horizontal text is boring. So we want to put things in perspective. We are still in move tool mode, press Command/Ctrl, click the left corner of nairobi background and drag the photo down on the left side (see image) correct the horizon again so that it is above/out of the image, maybe you need to drag the left point somewhat further to the left, to correct the vertical direction of buildings. It is important that all building are vertical. Make sure there is space for the text below.

Step 3 – Level it Out

Go to image > adjustments > Levels, put the middle arrow to 75. If you use your own photos, you may want to wait with this till last. The colorization has to be in line with the front buildings.

Step 4 – Vanishing Points

Now it is time to put the direction of the letters/buildings in perspective: vanishing points. Create a new layer. Call it vanishing points. Draw a vertical line (use Shift and the pencil tool). Duplicate the layer. Select the move tool and rotate the line 90 degrees. Merge the layers. Duplicate the layers. Rotate one layer 45 degrees, merge. Do this another two to three times, (22.5 degrees, 11.25 degrees, I guess you grab the idea). You now have a wheel like the picture below. Duplicate it, put it in one layer group (layer > new > group from layers (both vanishing points layers selected). Put this layer group to 50-60% transparency. I got the idea of the vanishing points from a previous tutorial on this site by Narendra Keshkar who created a great banana ship tutorial that was published in September 2010. Without it, this image would have been impossible. Have a look if you want.

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