Mars804020

Hello all, I'm trying to do this tutorial and I think I have everything down except the "last" step: 6. Now... all that's left to do is color our type. For that, we need to duplicate the 'text 1' layer, move this to the top of the palette, and fill it with a goldish color. -- try this one: R/192 G/161 B/65. Then set the layer to the blend mode 'Color'. You can then modify/fine-tune this color. further using the Hue&Sat filter if you wish -- by adjusting the Saturation slider only.

is this fill an edit>fill... ?? if so, how can we change the color? if not, please provide me the correct 'fill' I need to use. Also, where is the Hug&Sat filter? Also(finally), when I bring the layer to the top it covers up all the other work I did - kinda goes back to the first step but with gold now. I'm not sure what I'm missing here.

I will be happy to email my psd file if you like since it's 215KB. (I'm using PS7)

Gaussian

Welcome Mars804020 8))

I didn't write the tutorial, so I'm assuming this is what you have to do: make sure that the text is selected with the type tool, then change the color in the options bar (see attachment). If you move the text layer to the top it will indeed cover everything underneath, but that will change once you set the layer's blending mode to color as explained in the tutorial. The Hue & Saturation filter can be found at Image/Adjustments/Hue and Saturation or can also be found under the Adjustment Layer icon as shown in the 2nd attachment.

Mars804020

I know you didn't write the tutorial, but thanks for trying to help me out. Well, that color option would work if it was still text, but it's been rasterized. I at least got the hue and saturation to work like it should. I've posted what I ended up with... comments please!

Gaussian

Send the PSD to , because I want to have a look it at.

The reason is because it doesn't look like gold, looks more like yellow stone don't you think?

Mars804020

I agree, that's kinda why I posted it. [confused] I think I know part of the problem is the texture depth and scale of the "face color" layer is making it look like rock. :cry:

Gaussian

You get what's shown in A and I've not written this tutorial and do it for the first time and I get B, so I think it's fair to say that you haven't done everything what was told in the tutorial.

As for the part you had a problem with; it's indeed wrong. The text can't be filled because we're dealing with a duplicate of a rasterized text layer. Instead the writer should have written to select the bottom text with a ctrl+click on its layer palette icon and then create a new layer at the top and fill it with the proper color and set the blending mode of this layer to color.

As for the tutorial itself; it's not well written and partly this might have been caused by inexperience ormaybe it was done intentionally to make the tutorial compatible with older versions of Photoshop. However things could have been done easier and much more flexible.

For example to desaturate a layer you don?t need to convert the mode to grayscale and back to RGB, that?s just foolish. To desaturate a layer you can simple select image/adjustments/desaturate or use a hue & saturation correction or the channel mixer, which both already existed in PS5.

There is also no need to rasterize the text (I?m really sweating when I read things like that) and then fiddle with all kind of layers and tricks to get the gray gradient. All you need is a layer style, select the proper gradient and then select luminousity as the blending mode for this gradient and you have your gray gradient, it's that simple. Adding a color in overlay mode can also be done in the same layer style with the overlay effect.

It?s the same with the multiple strokes being used; it?s better to have them in a layer style and if you need more than one, then you just create multiple layer styles.

Mind you, the tutorial works and the results will be good, but it?s not the proper way to do things; too many layers are needed, some things could be done much easier and the whole process is not very flexible, because one change in one of the bottom layers often means that you have to redo all other layers.

It also doesn't allow you much room for experiments, because the only way to experiement right now is to undo and then try again with new values, not very flexible and in some case impossible to do if you can't undo a step that's not in the history or if you just opended the document. You won't have these problems if you use layer styles, not to mention that layer styles can be easily attached to other text in the same document or other documents.