Preserved Topic: Glass Text (Page 1 of 1)

I'm looking for a tutorial on creating a glass text - one where the LETTERS form the glass shape. I've found couple of "glass pills" or "glass spheres" tutorials, but that's exactly what I'm looking for. I'm still new to photoshop 6, so if possible, I'd like to have a step-by-step tutorial, giving detailed explanations. I found one site which had a pretty "broad" explanation of glass text, which I couldn't follow through completely. The result was awful (most likely a step or two which I missed during the tutorial) - it was more or less "hidden," and one would have to zoom in pretty high in order to see an outline of the glass text. BTW, if possible, I want this glass text on a dark green background I've made. Thanks in advance!

where the heck is human shield? that dude could do glass text. i will search for some of his posts....

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Pandora's Box!

cookie...
cookie...
cookie...

http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/farp/metal/metal.html
there is more here on glass and metal and reflections... look around... http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/farp/metal2/Transparent.htm
also DG's water tut can be of help....


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steve is smart. http://people.ne.mediaone.net/s-nelson/steve/Photoshop/psindex.html

this thread is interesting.... miss ya f1_error! http://www.ozoneasylum.com/Archives/Archive-000004/HTML/20000607-3-000028.html

i found the link to HumanSheilds tut but it is not there anymore.

look here: http://www.ozoneasylum.com/Archives/Archive-000004/HTML/20010223-3-000837.html

yes! i found F1's tutorial... check this out... http://www.innerworld.com/F1_error/CPM/
you could probably get some groovy stuff out of that last think if you make it transparent.... DANG IT... Human Shield had a really good tutorial.


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ho hum....

Glass. it reflects its surroundings. and refracts them. so if you are making glass on a solid colored bg... good friggin luck. It wont show up unless there is some detail behind it... that is if you want the glass to be clear. i guess you could give it a texture and then make it really shiny... well... fernow, just try to soak up those tutorials.

there is a glass filter in PS that works much like the displace filter. i say learn the displace filter. it is powerfull.

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Man, I never get tired of reading over Steve's Displacement tut at GN while I'm at work (big queries = lots of reading time ). One of these times, I need to remember to look it up when I'm home with PS, dammit!

Great stuff, Steve. Makes the Displacement filter make sense, whether it wants to or not!

How about this one. Made with the glass filter in Photoshop.

--rotren--

I'm glad I wrote it too! I can never remember all that stuff. I keep going back to remind myself of stuff all the time! Best way to stretch out short term memory is to write it down and then put it in a place you'll remember. The web is a pretty good place.

Now, if I could only remember where the keys to the damn safe deposit box are.....

I think it came out nicely.



Thanks to Steve for the background.

I'll give a quick explanation, and I can describe it in more detail if requested.

Use lighting effects on a black layer set to screen and use curves to sharpen up the highlights.

Make another layer, select the text, invert selection, fill with black, invert selection, gblur several times, invert selection, delete for the inner shadow. Set to multiply and drop opacity.

Make a displacement map with your channel, duplicate the background layer, and run displace with 20%. Select the text, invert and delete.




[This message has been edited by mbridge (edited 06-12-2001).]

Thanks for all the suggestions! I've read Steve's "displace filter tutorial," but there's ONE little portion I need help with. I "kinda" got the glass text to work, except I get a result similar to http://www.gurusnetwork.com/images/tutorials/photoshop/displace/displace_gurubulgedistort2.jpg instead of http://www.gurusnetwork.com/images/tutorials/photoshop/displace/displace_gurubulgefinal.jpg . Also, in the "Glass and Chrome" section of the tutorial, I've tried imitating Steve's work, but I'm a little puzzled as to how I should extract the word out of the background. I guess it's something to do with loading selections, but am a little stuck as to which selection I should load/extract. But, I really REALLY appreciate all your help! Thanks!

mbridge, if you could give me a little more detailed explanation, it'll save my day That's exactly what I want my text to look like. If possible, in addition to the above post I made, could you give me some hints on the lighting effects and the blurring effects you've mentioned? Thanks!

Hey - only time for a quick reply, but if I remember what I did with gurubulge, it was pretty simple. Had to suggest highlights and shading, right? If you've got the DMap working you're almost there. Take one of the channels from the DMap, copy it, paste it as a layer in the distorted file, set it to overlay and there you have it - highlights and shadows. From there on there's *loads* more you can do, but just that alone can work wonders at suggesting a light source and a raised object.

mbridge: nice! I did a double take when I scrolled down and saw the woods

The overlaying worked very nice! Thanks Steve! One more thing though: how did you manage to get the Opus design on the wood background (it's a little off topic, but the result looked absolutely cool)? I've tried what you mentioned in the tutorial, but since I've displaced "sky layer" with an "Opus" d-map, the layer containing the bulged "Opus" logo contains the "sky background" as well. I would like to extract the Opus logo (displaced with the sky layer) only, and place it on top of the wood texture as you did (just like the final version of Opus). Hope to hear from you soon!
mbridge - If it's not much trouble for you, could you supply me the *.psd file you did (and a little more detailed explanation on how to make the glass text)? It's EXACTLY the specs I've been looking for. Thanks a million times!

I'm going to be in it for the long haul on this one.

Make your text layer, it doesn't matter what color. Hide it.

Control Click the text layer to load selection, then create a new layer and fill it with black. Set the blending mode to screen.

Reload the text layer's selection, create a new channel, and fill the selection with white. Gaussian Blur at 8, 4, 2, 1, .5 or something like that, depending on your image (mine was rather large).

Select Inverse and Delete to get rid of the jaggies.

While still on the channel, Control A to select all, then control c to copy.

Make a new file, paste the copied channel into it, and save it as a .psd file.

Go back to your original file and click on the black layer that is set to screen. Go to Filters > Render > Lighting Effects.

Use a spotlight that points from the upper left to the lower right, Set the texture channel to alpha 1, and the height to around 50. Adjust the other settings as necessary.

Image > Adjust > Curves. Make 'em look something like this:



Make a new layer, load selection, invert selection, fill with black, inverst selection, gaussian blur 4-2-1-.5, invert selection, delete.

Set this layer to multiply with a low to medium opacity.

Now duplicate the background layer. With it selected, Filters > Distort > Displace, use values of about 20% and use the displacement map we create earlier. Load the text selection again and select inverse. Push delete and you're done!



[This message has been edited by mbridge (edited 06-13-2001).]

Junkyboy: close your eyes and imagine this: ... oops, you need your eyes open to read. Oh well. Read this and imagine your file.....

You have a separate file for the DMap. In your image file, you have an alpha channel with the crisp logo, white type on black background. In the layer palette, the bottom layer in the layer stack is the wood background. Above that is the image which you have distorted with the displace filter: in my case it was a blurred landscape. Okay so far? So you want to eliminate everything from the distorted layer except the "Opus" (or whatever your logo is).

There are three possible approaches that come to my mind immediately. 1) Most obvious and least desirable: load the alpha channel as a selection in the distorted layer; inverse selection; delete to eliminate surrounding area. Add drop shadow to taste. 2) Less obvious but more desirable: load the alpha channel as a selection but do not inverse selection; with the distorted layer selected, click the layer mask icon at the bottom of the palette. Pixels are not deleted, just hidden. Again, add layer effects such as drop shadow to taste. 3) Least obvious but slightly more desirable if you are going to stack additional layers above as in the tute: create a new empty layer between the wood background and distorted layer; load alpha channel as selection; fill with black; option/alt click the line between this layer and the distorted layer to create a clipping group. Again, no pixels deleted, just hidden. Add layer effects such as drop shadow to the lowest layer in the clipping group. This last option is useful if you continue on to add additional highlight layers above the distorted layer as outlined in the tutorial.

Go get 'em!

Thanks everybody! I got everything working ALMOST perfectly. Just ONE little detail. mbridge, when I did everything you told me, it came out with a result much darker thank yours. Did you do the lighting effects with airbrush, or did you do all the lighting with the filter? Thanks!

Steve, thanks for the great tips! The results were perfect! Seems like I've got a lot more reading/learning to do :P

I did the lighting effects with the filter.

My guess on why it's too dark is that you have the opacity of the inner shadow set too high. Drop the opacity to around 25% or so and it should look right.

this thread is FAQ material.

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this thread is FAQ material.

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You know...

...Eye's right!

I'm a newbie here, but have been lurking and learning for several weeks now. I don't have a tutorial written for this yet, but I have created an action for fairly decent glass text.



Glass action



Dami

Hey Dami.

Welcome inside the big iron doors! And thanks for making your first post a giving instead of taking!

Thanks for the welcome. Steve. Not sure how much of an offering it is, but I just sorta stumbled on this particular set of effects. Fortunately, they were few enough that I could actually remember what I did!

I'm very much in awe of the company here. In just the few weeks I've been reading, I've learned quite a bit. It's nice to find a forum where people have a good time and willingly share their knowledge.

Dami

Thank you VERY VERY VERY MUCH! The glass text looks beauuuuuutiful! I can never stop thanking you! I really REALLY appreciate all your help! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

I guess I'm a little late, but it never hurts to contribute... here's what I do:

I assume you have an image you want to put the glass over and some text...

First thing I do is take the text and put it into a channel, white on black. I select everything and copy it and open a new file. Paste this white on black text into the new file and gaussian blur it with a value of around 4-8... that's assuming a 640x480 file with text that fills it... if it's something smaller, use a lower number. The text should still be readable. Save this file... I usually call it offset.psd, so I'll refer to it as that for now.

Go back to the original file and copy the layer with the image you want to put the glass over. Gaussian blur this new layer with a value of 4. Now, use Filter/Distort/Glass... Set the distortion to its highest, that's the important setting. Smoothness can vary, but I usually set mine to 10. Now, for texture, Load Texture... and select the offset file you saved. Don't mess with the scaling or invert. Click okay.

Now, the image is warped, but the text is pretty unreadable. Load the selection of the channel you have the text in and invert the selection to cut away everything but the text. You could stop there, but it just never looks right to me without some added glare. I usually add the following things...

1. A Bevel and Emboss layer effect set the Highlight Mode to Color Dodge and the Shadow Mode to Color Burn... keep both at white and black, 75%. Adjust the size of the Bevel until it nolonger looks flat, but round. Set the angle of the lighting to whichever direction you want the light coming from, and turn the Altitude up high, like 75.

2. Copy the channel with the text and invert it to black on white. Use Filter/Artistic/Plastic Wrap... settings of 20, 10, 10. Load the selection from the original channel and contract it by 1. Invert it and fill with black. Load the original text selection again and copy this highlite to a new layer. Set the layer mode to color dodge and shift the highlite to wherever you want the light to be coming from.

That's all I can think of off the fly. I just did this simple demo image for the hell of it. I love glass text (as anyone can tell you)


Click



[This message has been edited by Human Shield (edited 06-18-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Human Shield (edited 06-18-2001).]

The BEST Way:

Go out and buy some Glass Blowing equipment, make the text you want with the this get a D-Cam and snap it!

Simple. You don't need to bother with any of that Displace/Curves crap... Hell, you don't even need PS! hehe