563 Creating a field of 50 evenly spaced stars

- [Teacher] In this movie, we'll take this single tiny star, which I suppose represents the first state Delaware, and we'll duplicate it to create Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and all the others, until we achieve 50 perfectly spaced stars as we're seeing here. And this is according to the exact specifications used for a real American flag. Now you may note that we have a total of nine rows and 11 columns, but that's a little bit misleading. You want to think in terms of the alternating rows and columns.

So if we skip every other one, we see that we have five rows and six columns, which gives us 30 stars, and then inset, we have four rows and five columns for another 20 stars, and of course 30 plus 20 equals a total of 50. Alright, so I'm going to go ahead and zoom in on my single star right there. And you want to make sure, first of all, that the stars layer is active, and then you want to switch to your Black Arrow tool, which you can get by pressing the A key, and then go ahead and click on the star to select it.

Now if all I wanted to do was move this star a specific distance, I would go up to the Edit menu and choose Free Transform Path, or I'd press Control+T or Command+T on a Mac. But we want to duplicate it as well, which means we need to add the Alt or Option key, and so I'll press Control+Alt+T or Command+Option+T on a Mac, then go up to the Options bar and click on this triangle, which represents Delta, so that we can move the star a relative distance. And you may recall that the star is set 148 pixels in and 126 pixels down, and because I need to move it down two rows, I'm going to multiply that 126 value times two, and that's going to give me a Y value right there of 252, like so, and then press the Enter key or the Return key on a Mac a couple of times to accept that change.

Alright, now I'll zoom out a little bit so I can see more of that blue field, and I'll repeat that duplication by adding the Shift key. And so here on the PC, that's Contol+Shift+Alt+T; on the Mac, that would be Command+Shift+Option+T; as many times as it takes to achieve a total of five stars. Alright, now you can just go ahead and marquee the stars, like so, in order to select them all, and now we need to create the six alternating columns by again pressing Control+Alt+T or Command+Option+T on a Mac, make sure the Delta is turned on, click in the X value, and this time, we want two times 148, which is 296 pixels, at which point you can press the Enter key or the Return key on a Mac a couple of times to accept that change.

Alright, now we want to create the rest of the columns, and so this time, press Control+Shift+Alt+T or Command+Shift+Option+T on a Mac until the stars fill the entire field like so. Alright, now we need to create the inset rows and columns, and so I'll go ahead and click on this first star in the top-left corner, and I'll once again press Control+Alt+T or Command+Option+T on a Mac, make sure that Delta is still turned on, click in the X value right there and change it to 148, and then tab over to the Y value and change it to 126.

So in other words, the center of this star is as far form this one as this one is from the top-left corner of the image. Then press the Enter key or the Return key on a Mac a couple of times to apply that change. Now press Control+Alt+T or Command+Option+T again, and this time, change just the Y value to 252 pixels, and press the Enter key or the Return key on a Mac in order to apply that change. Now you want to repeat that last duplication by pressing Control+Shift+Alt+T here on a PC or Command+Shift+Option+T on a Mac.

Now make a skinny marquee through those four stars, and then duplicate them by pressing Control+Alt+T or Command+Option+T on a Mac, click on the X right there, make sure the Delta is still turned on, and change it to 296 pixels, press the Enter key or the Return key on a Mac a couple a times, and then press Control+Shift+Alt+T or Command+Shift+Option+T as many times as it takes to create that final column of stars. And you should now have a total of 50 perfectly spaced stars.

Now I want to make a couple of blending changes. First of all, I want to make both the stripes and the union layers even darker, so I'm going to change their blend modes from Multiply to Linear Burn in order to create this darker effect, and I'm going to bring through some of the bright colors from those photographic images by double-clicking on an empty portion of that union layer in order to bring up the Layer Style dialog box, and then I'll press the Alt key or the Option key on a Mac and drag the left half of this white triangle that's associated with the Underlying Layer slider in order to let some of those bright colors force through.

And just to see what we've done here, I'll press Control+Z or Command+Z on a Mac, that was before, and then if I press Control or Command+Z again, that's after. Now I want to do the same thing with the stripes, and so I'll double-click on an empty portion of them, press the Alt key or the Option key on a Mac, and drag the left half of that white slider to that same location. So we have a value of 200 above my cursor right there associated with the Underlying Layer slider. And then I'll click OK. And just so you can see the difference this time as well, this is before and this is after.

So it's a pretty subtle difference, but I think it makes a nice contribution. Alright, now what we want to do is, instead of having white stars, we want the stars to be the color of these photographic images in the background, which means that we need a knockout group. And to make that, click on the union layer in order to make it active, and Shift-click on the stars layers. So those three layers are selected. And just so we're no longer seeing the path outlines, I'm going to switch to my Rectangular Marquee tool. Next, what you want to do is go to the layers panel flyout menu, click on it of course, and choose New Group from Layers, and I'm just going to call this guy knockout, let's say, and then click OK.

Alright, now I'll go ahead and trill open that knockout group and I'm going to rename this stars layer 50 stars just to make sure I know exactly what's going on, and then I'll double-click on an empty portion of it in order to once again visit the Layer Style dialog box. In order to burn down, basically turn these 50 stars into a hole that goes all the way through to the bottom of the group, you need to change knockout right there from None to Shallow. If you go Deep, you'll go all the way to the very bottom image, which is not really what we want.

So stick with Shallow instead. That doesn't immediately do anything, as you can see right here, until you reduce your fill opacity value, and that starts turning those stars into holes, and then at a fill opacity value of zero percent, you have absolute holes. So in order to make this work, you need to put everybody in a group, you need to set knockout to Shallow, and you need to reduce the fill opacity value to zero percent, at which point, you can click OK. And that is it, folks. Now I'll go ahead and press Shift+F in order to switch to the full-screen mode, and I'll press Control+0 to zoom out as well.

And that is how you create a technically impeccable American flag complete with 50 perfectly spaced stars that you can then merge with one or more photographic images here inside Photoshop.