From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

692 Blending opposing rows of colorful molecules

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

692 Blending opposing rows of colorful molecules

- [Instructor] In this movie, we're going to take our regular rows of hexagonal molecules, and we're going to group, transform, and duplicate them in order to create this final effect here. And notice we have so many wild interactions of color that it becomes less of a predictable outcome and more of a happy accident. Alright, so, notice here in the layers panel that we have a little bit of a mess going, and that's because each group is expanded to show its layer effect. If you want to collapse any given effect, then just click on this up-pointing arrowhead to the right of the fx icon. If you want to collapse all of them, then you press the alt key or the option key on the Mac and click. Alright, now I want to align all of these rows to the four walls of the canvas. And so, I'll click on row eight and shift click on row one so that they're all selected, and then I'll press Control + Minus, or Command + Minus on a Mac, to zoom out. And if you get this effect where you're seeing all the path outlines then you can just click on the background and then go ahead and reselect those groups, like so. Alright, now I'll press Control + A, or Command + A on a Mac, in order to select all of the artwork, and then I'll switch to the move tool, which you can get by pressing the v key. And now notice these alignment icons up here in the options bar. If I were to click on align horizontal centers, then I would align every single row to the canvas, which is obviously not what I want. It gets even worse if I click align vertical centers, in which case I end up piling all the rows on top of each other. Alright, so I'm going to undo that by pressing Control + Alt + Z, or Command + Option + Z on a Mac, a couple of times. And so what we need to do is group all of the groups together by clicking on the fly-out menu icon in the top right corner of the layers panel and choosing new group from layers. And I'm going to call this guy "rotate 15 degrees." To create a degree symbol on a Mac, you just press Shift + Option + 8. On a PC, you press and hold the alt key and then dial in 0176 on a numerical keypad. Alright, I'll go ahead and click okay in order to create that group. And now notice if I click the align horizontal centers icon, I end up centering all the rows together, and the same happens if I click align vertical centers. Alright, now at this point, I no longer need this selection, so I'll press Control + D, or Command + D on a Mac, to deselect the image. Alright, now I want to show you two different possible outcomes. And so, I'm going to duplicate this image by going up to the image menu and choosing the duplicate command, and I'm going to call this new image "angry" and click okay. And I'll zoom in on it, and I'll go ahead and rotate this group 15 degrees by going up to the edit menu and choosing the free transform command, or you can just press Control + t, or Command + t on a Mac, and then notice this rotate value up here in the Options bar. Just go ahead and select that value, and change it to 15 degrees. And the reason I came up with 15 is if you rotate a hexagon 60 degrees, then it doesn't look any different. It looks the same as it did before. And if you take 60 and divide it by 4, you get 15, and that will eventually help the duplicate rows to cut through each other. Alright, so I'll go ahead and enter 15 degrees. Now this is not how things are going to look, by the way. Photoshop currently has a problem previewing transformations applied to vector-based shape layers. If you want to see how it's really going to look, then you press the Enter key or the return key on a MAC a couple of times to apply that change. And we end up with this effect here. Alright, now I want to duplicate all these rows, and have them cut against each other, and I'm going to do that by jumping a copy of this group, which you can do by pressing Control + j, or command + j on a Mac, and then I'll rename this group "flip h," meaning "flip horizontal", and then I'll do that by going up to the Edit menu, choosing Transform, and then choosing Flip Horizontal, and we end up with this effect here. Now, things are pretty darn bright, and that's because if you were to twirl open this larger group here, and click on any one of the groups, you'll see that it's set to the Lighten blend mode, and then if you were to twirl open that group and click on any one of the objects, they're all set to the Lighten blend mode as well, which means we have an awful lot of lightening going on. Alright, I'm going to twirl these guys closed. The easiest way to darken the image, is to go up to the Layer menu, choose New Adjustment Layer, and then choose Brightness/Contrast. And now, I'll just go ahead and call this layer "contrast," and click okay, and I'll select that first value in the properties panel by pressing Shift + Enter, that would be Shift + Return on the Mac, and then press Shift + down arrow three times, in order to reduce that value to negative 30. Then I'm going to take the Contrast value up to 100, and I'll hide the properties panel. Alright, now that I can better see what's going on with my composition, I'm going to move everything upward by clicking on the "flip h" layer, and shift-clicking on rotate 15 degrees. So, both of the groups are selected. And then, this is very important, notice that my move tool is still selected, but the Auto-Select check box is turned on. I do not want that, that's going to mess things up, so I'll just turn the check box off. And then, I'll drag upward, while pressing the Shift key until my heads-up display tells me that I've moved the artwork up 300 pixels, at which point I'll release, and I end up with what looks to me like a kind of angry face, with these two purple eyeballs, and these furrowed purple brows. Lets compare that to what happens if we rotate the rows in the opposite direction. And so, I'll go ahead and switch over to my original rows image, and with the rotate 15 degrees group selected, I'll go up to the Edit menu and choose the Free Transform command, and this time, as opposed to setting the rotate value to positive 15 degrees, I'll set it to negative 15, and then I'll press the Enter key, or the Return key on a Mac a couple of times, to apply that change. Alright, now lets jump a copy of that group by pressing Control + j, or Command + j on a Mac. I'll once again name this guy "flip h," and then I'll go up to the Edit menu, choose Transform, and choose Flip Horizontal in order to flip that group so the rows are running in the opposite direction. Now, again, the image is too bright, and the easiest way to darken it up, is to return to the angry image, and select it's contrast layer right there. Then, what you want to do is switch to the Rectangular Marquee Tool, which you can get by pressing the m key, and then right click any old place in the document window, and choose Duplicate Layer, and then just go ahead and change the document to base hex pattern, which is the one we're working on, and click OK, or, if you're working in the newest version of Photoshop, then you can copy this adjustment layer just by pressing Control + c, or Command + c on a Mac, and then, go ahead and switch over to the other image, and press Control + v, or Command + v on a Mac in order to paste that layer into place, like so. Alright, now if we compare it to the final effect that I showed you at the beginning of this movie, you can see that it's not looking quite the same. So, where the final effect is concerned, I'm seeing a kind of happy face with one purple eye over here, and another at this location, and then an open mouth running through the center of the image. That is not what I'm seeing when I look at the effect we have right now. Instead I'm seeing two big colorful tires, but you can make big changes pretty easily just by moving things around. And so I'm going to click on the rotate 15 degrees layer, and then I'm going to switch back to my move tool, up here at the top of the toolbox, and I'll press Shift + right arrow 5 times in a row. Now, you can't just hold the Shift key and "ratatat" the right arrow key. It's not going to work. Instead, you have to be tragically methodical by pressing Shift + right arrow, and making sure that Photoshop catches up with you. So, that's one. That's two. That's three. That's four. And, that's five. So, my experience is, you get more reliable results if you work a little more slowly where that one is concerned. And, then I'll select the flip h group, and I'll press Shift + left arrow once, then twice, three times, four times, and a total of five times, and that way I'm moving all the rows associated with the rotate 15 degrees group 50 pixels to the right, and all those associated with the flip h group, 50 pixels to the left. And now, I'm going to select both those groups by clicking on one and shift-clicking on the other, and I'll press Shift + up arrow one, two, three, four, five times. And now, with just that little bit of work, I end up transforming our previous effect so it exactly matches the advertised final version of the artwork. And so, whether you're looking for a kind of happy face or an angry one, that is how you blend row upon row of colorful molecules here inside Photoshop.

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