[mixin visuals]

can anyone tell me how to get this shadow effect?

[Avenir]

ok, well, I figured out a *way* to do it, but I am certain there is something easier. wanna know? ok.

type the text, get it exactly as you want (in this case, stroke it as well with a black edge). make sure it's right, because then you duplicate the layer, make the text all black (or shadow color), and keep the stroke.

rasterize the new layer.

using the move tool, move the layer the same amount of pixels to the right and down to get the bottom (where the shadown "touches" the back plane) of it where you want

now the fun part

record a macro (photoshop) of you duplicating that layer, then moving it up one pixel and left one pixel. set a function key to the macro.

sit back, press F14 (or whatever key) about 20 times, and voila, instant 1984 shadow



see what I mean? there has to be an easier way.

[chabig]

I think that's exactly how you do it. There is no easier way.

[mixin visuals]

Originally posted by Avenir:
ok, well, I figured out a *way* to do it, but I am certain there is something easier. wanna know? ok.

type the text, get it exactly as you want (in this case, stroke it as well with a black edge). make sure it's right, because then you duplicate the layer, make the text all black (or shadow color), and keep the stroke.

rasterize the new layer.

using the move tool, move the layer the same amount of pixels to the right and down to get the bottom (where the shadown "touches" the back plane) of it where you want

now the fun part

record a macro (photoshop) of you duplicating that layer, then moving it up one pixel and left one pixel. set a function key to the macro.

sit back, press F14 (or whatever key) about 20 times, and voila, instant 1984 shadow



see what I mean? there has to be an easier way.

awesome. nice!

anyone know of a nice rounded font like the one in the pic?

[mixin visuals]

Avenir you rock, it works like a charm!!!!

[Demonhood]

i did it the same as Avenir, altho i used Filter : Offset because i felt the PS Action needed a filter of some sort

[Avenir]

hahahaha, no way, you all can't be serious that this is the best way! hahaha, wow. maybe I should sell my own photoshop actions.

as for the rounded font, I have a kick-butt one called "uhop lite" that's super rounded and almost looks "chewy" but it's an entirely lowercase font, so the results won't be quite the same. Benjamin Gothic is also rounded, but not the same thing. If anyone knows what that font up on the t-shirt is, I'd love to know
(the one I used in the demo was Lucida)

well, glad it works somehow, i suppose you could always record an action that would do say 20 or 25 down/right move steps, then 20 or 25 moves up/left, all the while merging each new layer with the old after each move... ora ten-step one you just do twice. might end up being a pretty simplistic action actually, too bad you still have to rasterize the text.


[edit:]

Ok, I created a first action that dupes any text layer currently selected, turns text color to black, rasterizes layer, moves 20px right and 20px down. Then I told it to call a second action that duplicates the current layer, names new layer "merge me" and moves that new layer up and left 1px by 1px. The first action ("funky shadow") calls the new action ("create shadow layers") 20 times. I run the first action, it runs the second 20 times, and voila, all i have to do is link all the layers that say "merge me", choose "layer > flatten linked" and I'm set. takes about 15 seconds to do, so maybe it's not such a bad thing at all. I like this, I may have to use it more


font is "uhop lite"

[godzookie2k]

there is a totally easier way. I'll get around to it when I'm sober. it involves knowing how to use the path tool.

[mixin visuals]

i am happy to get the look with his way. thanks again

[Avenir]

Originally posted by mixin visuals:
i am happy to get the look with his way. thanks again

whoa, punk, where'd you get that font! what is it?!

[mixin visuals]

Originally posted by Avenir:
whoa, punk, where'd you get that font! what is it?!

hehehe, i am not tellin you!!!! just kiddin, its VAG Rounded.

thanks again! good stuff

[designbc]

I think it's easier in Illustrator. Just convert the text to outlines, make it a compund path, duplicate it and then apply the Blend Tool.

[art_director]

Originally posted by designbc:
I think it's easier in Illustrator. Just convert the text to outlines, make it a compund path, duplicate it and then apply the Blend Tool.

this is the best approach. besides, it gives you a vector based graphic to work with.

[andi*pandi]

Originally posted by designbc:
I think it's easier in Illustrator. Just convert the text to outlines, make it a compund path, duplicate it and then apply the Blend Tool.

this is what I was going to say, and no scripting needed.

[Dace]

Hope no one minds if I make this the official "how do you get this effect" thread...so, how do you get this effect?



I don't know about the US, but here in Canada Burger King uses this same effect too (like on their cups) and I always wondered how it was done.

[Avenir]

Originally posted by Dace:
Hope no one minds if I make this the official "how do you get this effect" thread...so, how do you get this effect?

The way I was able to sorta do it was with the Pointilize Filter in Photoshop (under "filters > pixelate "). I created a circle, cut and repasted the outter edge as a new layer, applied the pixelate filter until I got the results I wanted, then merged the layers back together. It's not exactly the same thing, but I bet you could get it with some tweaking eventually.

Anyone know of another way?

[Dace]

Originally posted by mixin visuals:
can anyone tell me how to get this shadow effect?

I discovered a font here:

http://www.1001freefonts.com/fonts/afonts3.htm

called Alba that has a variation of it called Alba Super that closely resembles the effect you're trying to reproduce.

[Dogma]

Originally posted by Avenir:
The way I was able to sorta do it was with the Pointilize Filter in Photoshop (under "filters > pixelate "). I created a circle, cut and repasted the outter edge as a new layer, applied the pixelate filter until I got the results I wanted, then merged the layers back together. It's not exactly the same thing, but I bet you could get it with some tweaking eventually.

Anyone know of another way?

I used to do this one, and found that creating your basic shape with a black fill on a white background, giving a reasonable about of blur for the edges, and then applying the "colour halftone" filter across it worked a treat. It has to be a flat image, and you need to change the colour screens to be the same angle (just change it 45°) and then desaturate the image. Once there, you can of course use Freehand or whatever to trace the outline and reuse your effect with resolution independence!

A quick sample -

[Avenir]

Originally posted by Dogma:
I used to do this one, and found that creating your basic shape with a black fill on a white background, giving a reasonable about of blur for the edges, and then applying the "colour halftone" filter across it worked a treat. It has to be a flat image, and you need to change the colour screens to be the same angle (just change it 45°) and then desaturate the image. Once there, you can of course use Freehand or whatever to trace the outline and reuse your effect with resolution independence!

well damn, that's simple and much more effective (and almost certainly the way that panic did it)... dace, forget my setp, definitely do it this way

thanks dogma

[Dace]

Originally posted by Dogma:
I used to do this one, and found that creating your basic shape with a black fill on a white background, giving a reasonable about of blur for the edges, and then applying the "colour halftone" filter across it worked a treat. It has to be a flat image, and you need to change the colour screens to be the same angle (just change it 45°) and then desaturate the image. Once there, you can of course use Freehand or whatever to trace the outline and reuse your effect with resolution independence!

A quick sample -

Works for me too, thanks

[mixin visuals]

good stuff

[Dogma]

As for yor deep shadow type effect - I had a go with Cinema 4D and with Freehand, just to see any other ways it could be done.

Freehand ended up being almost identical to the Illustrator - using the blend command. I tried Smudge - but it crashed Freehand everytime! So, the Freehand Sample;



As for Cinema 4D, I thought that maybe a Flash Render would be a good idea, but that failed to work in the view that was necessary. The view I used here was "Frog", but "military" and "Bird" work quite similarly. It's not perfect, and it's a bit of a long road for a short cut, but it could be useful. (I created the text as a path, added a Nurbs Extrude, made it Editable, and then applied different textures to the extrude and caps.) The Example;

[DeathMan]

I love these types of threads. it seems like in illustrator, somewho the answer is always the blend tool.

[MikeM33]

Originally posted by designbc:
I think it's easier in Illustrator. Just convert the text to outlines, make it a compund path, duplicate it and then apply the Blend Tool.

Agreed, much simpler, and you get a perfectly smooth transition. Sometimes other applications come into play, sometimes you just have to play around with your filters. I'm certain there's ways of achieving the same effect in photoshop also (if you don't have illustrator).

The Illustrator method is probably the best/easiest, however. You can always take the illustrator file, save it as an EPS and rasterize it into photoshop (if that's what you prefer). I'd be jumping into Illustrator to do it if I had to.

MikeM

[preacherman]

there's a MUCH easier way to get the same effect, except not as drastic. In photoshop, select drop shadow, increase the spread and voila! A extremely simple way to get (almost) the same effect.

http://www.homepage.mac.com/hoofly/p...dropshadow.gif

damn thing wouldn't let me upload the pic..

edit: this is just SIMILAR to the effect mixin visuals wanted. Not the same thing. You could probably get it to look better by tweaking the settings in the drop shadow effect.

[DeathMan]

preacherman: Not to be rude, but, it doesn't look the same at all to me.

[dlefebvre]

You could probably get it to look better by tweaking the settings in the drop shadow effect.

The problem with this method is the perspective of the extrusion. With drop shadow, you will always have a flat result. You could put the shadow on a seperate layer and skew it, but it's not really going to work.
Te best way I know is the blend tool in Illustraor.

[mixin visuals]

we need more threads like this

[Avenir]

Originally posted by mixin visuals:
we need more threads like this

heh heh... too true

how about this?

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=169274

help me out, i could use the bump

[mixin visuals]

good luck

[mzllr]

little late to the party, but i thought i'd throw in another variation...

using 'extrude' in freehand mx

[Giles Booth]

mzllr, that's nice but I think zero-perspective is better.

This really is a great thread, though. It's been driving me mad trying to get that effect and now I know how to do it in both Illustrator and Photoshop thanks to you guys - my effort's at www.othermachines.org

If you look around you, on signs, adverts, etc it's such a common effect I'm a little surprised it's not easier to achieve in Adobe products.

Also, in Illustrator using the blend tool you get quite a complex piece of artwork - is there any easy way to simplify the 'drop shadow', which could be quite a simple shape.

[godzookie2k]

it aint hard, about two seconds with the path tool and you'd be set.

[Giles Booth]

Originally posted by godzookie2k:
it aint hard, about two seconds with the path tool and you'd be set.

I'm a bit confused I'm afraid - I'm using Illustrator 9 in Classic mode on my 500mHz iBook (it's painfully slow rendering my image with the shadow done using the blend tool!)

When you say path tool, I have a path submenu under Object... which offers me Join, Average, Outline Stroke, Clean up etc - I've tried all of them (maybe with the wrong settings) but none of them seems to do what I want, which is to turn the two blended objects into one simple outline object.

[frownyfrank]

The above faux 3D effect reminded me of this great animated music video. It'd old news, but worth a repost if anyone hasn't seen it:

http://www.shynola.com/j_s/j_s_download.htm

[Giles Booth]

Originally posted by frownyfrank:
The above faux 3D effect reminded me of this great animated music video. It'd old news, but worth a repost if anyone hasn't seen it:

http://www.shynola.com/j_s/j_s_download.htm

thank you fronwnyfrank - you just justified the cost of ADSL this month! what a great video!