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

806 Combining distortions with blend modes

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

806 Combining distortions with blend modes

assign the Smart Filters combined with Blend Modes. All right, so, I'm going to go ahead and collapse the 1st lines layer just to save a little bit of room on screen, and then I'm going to expand this all 2nd lines folder right here, but that's going to give us an awful lot of twirl, as you're seeing right here, which to my mind is too much, but because I've applied Twirl as a Smart Filter, I can modify the effect just by double-clicking on it which will, once again, bring up the Twirl dialogue box if ever so slowly, and that will take the Angle value down to just 20, and I'll click OK. And so, this is how things look before we assign the Twirl filter, and notice how long it takes to turn the filter off. Whereas if I just press Control + Z, or Command + Z on a Mac, to reapply the filter, it happens very quickly. All right, here's something else that's going to happen slowly. I want to modify the Blend Mode by double-clicking on this little slider's icon over here on the right-hand side of the panel. And that's going to eventually bring up the Blend Options dialogue box, although it might take a moment or two, and I'm going to go ahead and change the Blend Mode to Multiply, it should work out quite nicely, and what that's going to do is bring back my original lines and add the twirl lines to them, and then I'll click OK. And so, just so you can see the difference here, I'll press Control + Z, that's how things look when we just twirl the lines, and then if I press Control + Shift + C, or Command + Shift + C on a Mac, in the most recent version of Photoshop anyway, then you can see that I'm multiplying the blurred lines on the original ones. All right, now let's change the color of those lines by dropping down to the fx icon and choosing Color Overlay. And notice that I've set the Blend Mode to Normal and the Opacity is cranked up to 100%, which means I am just flat out changing the color of the lines, and you might ask me Well, why don't you just change the actual smart object? You could just go in there and change the color of those 24 different line layers for one thing. I don't want to do that. And notice that we have some varying orange lines here in the background and we're not effecting the colors of any of the other 2nd lines. All right, finally, I want to go up to the Blend Mode popup menu, up here in the top-left corner of the Layers panel, and notice what happens if I change the Blend Mode to Dissolve, you can see that it turns into a kind of noisy mess, which, if that's your thing, then you can go ahead and apply that Blend Mode. I, however, am going to switch to Screen, which is going to make a subtle but meaningful difference. All right, let's do something similar to the top 2nd lines. I want to assign the Twirl filter again, but if I do so, and then I have to change the Blend Mode, it's going to take longer than if I just copy this Twirl onto that layer. below that top 2nd lines layer in order to bring up the Twirl dialogue box, and then I'll just change this Angle value to negative 20, so you can go with negative twirls as well, and then click OK in order to assign that effect, and you'll see that the lines now twirl in a different direction. But, we still have that same Blend Mode. So if I were to double-click on this slider icon, you don't need to do it because it's an utter and complete waste of time, I'm just showing you what's going on here. The Mode is still set to Multiply, which is what I want, so I'll just go ahead and cancel. And notice that the Blend Mode should persist because I went ahead and duplicated that Twirl filter from the previous layer, but if I double-click on the slider's icon right there in order to bring up the Blend Options dialogue box, we end up getting a different effect on screen. So, there may be some kind of bug here, but it's worth double-clicking on that guy and then clicking OK just to make sure we're really applying the Multiply Mode. All right, now I want to go ahead and color this layer as well. So, once again, click on the fx icon and choose Color Overlay. As you can see, it's duplicating the last color I applied. I still want the Blend Mode to be Normal and the Opacity to be 100%, but I want to change the colors. So I'll click on the color swatch and this time I'm going to dial in and this time I'm going to dial in a Hue value of 270 degrees, which is violet, a Hue value of 270 degrees, which is violet, and then I'll tab down to the Brightness value and then I'll tab down to the Brightness value and take it down to 50%, and click OK, and take it down to 50%, and click OK, and then click OK again in order to apply that color, and then click OK again in order to apply that color, and you can see that we now have a bunch of purple lines. and you can see that we now have a bunch of purple lines. And then finally I'm going to once again change And then finally I'm going to once again change the Blend Mode of the layer the Blend Mode of the layer not to Dissolve but rather to Screen, not to Dissolve but rather to Screen, so that we have a little bit of interaction so that we have a little bit of interaction between the various lines. between the various lines. All right, now I want to achieve a more explosive effect, All right, now I want to achieve a more explosive effect, as we're seeing right here, as we're seeing right here, and so I'm going to create yet another layer and so I'm going to create yet another layer of 2nd lines by jumping this guy, of 2nd lines by jumping this guy, which you do by pressing Control + J, which you do by pressing Control + J, or Command + J on a Mac, or Command + J on a Mac, in order to create a copy of it, in order to create a copy of it, and then I'm going to go ahead and rotate these lines and then I'm going to go ahead and rotate these lines a little more than they are right now a little more than they are right now by going up to the Edit menu and choosing Free Transform by going up to the Edit menu and choosing Free Transform or you have that keyboard shortcut or you have that keyboard shortcut of Control + T here on a PC, or Command + T on a Mac, at which point, Photoshop may well tell you that it's going to turn off the Smart Filters, that's just fine so click OK, and notice that we have our original lines from last week. And now I'm going to go up to this Rotate value right here and I'm going to change it from negative five to negative 10, and then I'll press the Enter key, or the Return key on a Mac, a couple of times in order to apply that change. Now I'm not looking for these particular lines to be purple, so I'll double-click on the Color Overlay effect here inside the Layers panel and then I'll click on the color swatch and I'll change the Hue to 50 degrees, which is a shade of yellow, albeit currently a very ugly one, that's because the Brightness value is so low, so I'll take it up to 100%. I'm looking for a pale yellow, however, so I'll Shift + Tab back to the Saturation value so I'll Shift + Tab back to the Saturation value and set it to 33% and then click OK a couple of times and set it to 33% and then click OK a couple of times in order to change the color of those lines to yellow. in order to change the color of those lines to yellow. And now I want to make them shoot out like crazy And now I want to make them shoot out like crazy and so I'm going to apply yet another Smart Filter and so I'm going to apply yet another Smart Filter by going up to the Filter menu, choosing Blur, by going up to the Filter menu, choosing Blur, and then once again choosing Radial Blur. and then once again choosing Radial Blur. And I'm going to apply that same amount of 100 And I'm going to apply that same amount of 100 that we've applied before. that we've applied before. You want the Blur method to be Zoom, You want the Blur method to be Zoom, and unless you want your effect to be noisy, you want to set Quality to Best, and then go ahead and click OK. Now this might take a few moments to apply because it's one of Photoshop's slowest filters, but that is not enough, not enough power, so I'm going to double-click on this little slider's icon right here to the right of the top Radial Blur item there, and that's going to very slowly bring up the Blend Options dialogue box. Notice we even got a progress bar that time. And then what you want to do, because in the background you're actually working with black lines, you want to bolster the effect by changing the Blend Mode to Multiply, and that's going to make those black lines even blacker, which is going to make the yellower lines even brighter as soon as I go ahead and click OK. All right, now, if we take a look at the final effect, you can see our color scheme is a little different and that's a function of that top gradient layer right there. So what I'll do is switch back to my image in progress, I'm going to tidy up the Layers panel just by collapsing this folder right there, and then I'll double-click on the swatch for that gradient layer to bring up the Gradient Fill dialogue box. I'm not going to change the Gradient itself, but I am going to change the Style from Linear to Radial in order to produce this effect here, and then I'll take the Scale value down to 90 and I'll change the Angle, which for some reason makes a huge difference to zero degrees, and then I'll go ahead and click OK. And notice if I press Control + Z, or Command + Z on a Mac, that not only dramatically changes the colors around the perimeter of the image, but it also changes the color of that center. So this is the way it looked before, quite bright, and this is the way it looks now. All right, I'll go ahead and press Shift + F in order to switch to the Full Screen Mode, and I'll zoom on in as well. And that is how you create my final dream effect. And that is how you create my final dream effect. Believe it or not, I dreamt this whole thing. Believe it or not, I dreamt this whole thing. Actually, that's not quite true. Actually, that's not quite true. I made up a lot of it while I was awake. I made up a lot of it while I was awake. But, this is how you achieve what is ultimately But, this is how you achieve what is ultimately an extraordinary albeit a symmetrical effect an extraordinary albeit a symmetrical effect by combining editable Smart Filters by combining editable Smart Filters with Blend Modes here inside Photoshop. with Blend Modes here inside Photoshop.

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