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

771 The final full-color mandala

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

771 The final full-color mandala

- [Instructor] Alright, in this movie we're going to take our last seen mandala effect, complete with its two dynamic gradient layers and we're going to bring back the more dots layer and assign it a dynamic gradient fill as well in order to create this final effect. Alright, so the first thing you want to do if you're working along with me, is turn the more dots layer back on. And now I'm going to select the topmost of the two dynamic gradient layers and I'm going to duplicate this guy by pressing the Alt key or the Option key on a Mac and dragging it and dropping it to the top of the stack. And once again, because I have the Alt or Option key down I'm seeing the double arrow cursor, which tells me that I'm going to duplicate that layer. Now, I want to clip it to the more dots layer, and so I'll press the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac and click on that horizontal divider line that separates the color and more dots layers. And as you can see, that goes ahead and insets the color layer, which tells us that it is now clipped. Alright, next, I'll double click on the thumbnail for that layer to bring up the gradient fill dialog box and I'll click on the gradient bar to bring up the Gradient Editor dialog box. This time around, we just need two color stops, the orange one and the blue one, and so I'm going to grab the first white one and drag it down to get rid of it. I'll also grab the red one and drag it down, in order to delete it as well. And I'll grab the orange stop and drag it all the way over to the left hand side of the bar. Then, I'll go ahead and click OK a couple of times, in order to accept that change. Alright, now I really want the mandala layer to be in front of the more dots layer, but if I grab it and just drag it to the top of the stack like so, then I'll end up leaving its gradient behind, which is not what I want, so I'll undo that change. And with the mandala layer selected, I'll shift click on its color layer, just above it, and then I'll drag both of them up to the top of the stack, like so. And that's just going to give us a better transition in the middle of the artwork. And so I'll press Control + One or Command + One on a Mac to zoom in to the center right there, and just so we can see the difference, this is before and this is after. Perhaps it'll make a little more sense if we zoom out a little bit. So again, this is before with the more dots on top and this is after with the mandala layer on top. And incidentally, if you're working with Photoshop CC 2019, you undo differently than you used to before, so it's going to be a Control + Z for undo, that's Command + Z on a Mac, it's going to be a Control + Shift or Command + Shift+ Z for redo. Alright, now I want to take the mandala layer by itself and I want to blend it with the dots in the background by changing the blend mode from Normal to Screen and you can see, here inside Photoshop CC 2019 and later, that I can preview the blend mode on the fly, which is very helpful indeed. And so at this point we're using the mandala layer to brighten the more dots layer behind it. Alright finally, I want to add a little bit of a radial blur to the more dots layer, so I'm going to click on it to select it. And I'll press Control + Zero or Command + Zero on the Mac to zoom out, and you can see we've got this amazing interaction going on between those big blue dots on this more dots layer and all the other brush strokes on the mandala layer. Alright, so I'm ultimately going to want to go up to the filter menu, choose blur, and then choose Radial Blur. But if I do so, then I'm going to apply a static modification, if you want to apply a dynamic effect instead, then armed with the rectangular marquee tool, which is selected up here at the top of the tool box, I would right click inside the image window and choose convert to smart object, that's my favorite way of working anyway, and now you can see a little page icon in the bottom right corner of the thumbnail for the more dots layer here inside the layers panel, which tells you that you're working with an indestructible smart object. At which point, I'll return to the Filter menu, choose Blur, and this time actually choose Radial Blur. Now, this dialog box doesn't really show you what's going on, you can see that we have this terrible non-preview right here, but I know that I want to change the blur method to zoom. And I generally start things out by cranking the amount value up to 100%, at which point I'll click OK and I can see know that I end up blurring those dots entirely away. And so this is before with those vivid blue dots, and this is after with basically nothing left. So I've pretty well obliterated this layer. Which is why it's so great I can modify the effect by double clicking on the words Radial Blur, here inside the Layers panel. And I ended up taking the amount value down to 30, at which point, once I click OK, and wait a moment for the image to update, you can see that I bring some of those brushstrokes back. Now I want to bring them back better still, and so I'm going to change the blend mode assigned to this specific smart filter, by double clicking on that little slider icon over here on the far right side of the Layers panel, which will bring up the Blending Options dialog box. And now notice if I change the mode from Normal to Screen, I'm not previewing the effect this time around, but as soon as I commit to the blend mode you can see that brings the dots back nicely. At which point I'll click OK. And just so we can see the difference here, I'll go ahead and turn off the smart filters. This is how the dots look without any blur, and I'm just going to go ahead and zoom in so you can see things that much better. So at this point we've got some nice sharp dots. But if I were to turn the smart filters back on, you can see that we have a little bit of a dynamic blur. Alright, now our Layers panel is getting pretty full here. I can reduce some of the clutter by right clicking on this empty filter mask, the white thumbnail, and choosing Delete Filter Mask just to get rid of it. At which point I'll press Shift + F to switch to the full screen mode, and I'll press Control + Zero or Command + Zero on the Mac to center my zoom. And just so you can fully appreciate what we've been able to achieve this week, this is the original black and white version of the artwork, which is pretty cool, but frankly it's a little bit muddled. And here's the final full color version of the effect thanks to our addition of a few dynamic gradient fill layers along with a dynamic smart filter here inside Photoshop.

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