Adobe Photoshop CC - Essentials Training

How to create dripping paint text effect in Photoshop CC

Daniel Walter Scott

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Hi there, this cool little video is using the same techniques we learned in the last video using the Liquify Tool, but we're going to turn it into drippy text. You can do the same thing with a logo, or maybe an icon. Let's jump in now and learn how. 
First up, let's open up our image, you can use any image. I'm using, from your 'Exercise Files', '08 Transform'. There's one here called 'Paint Text 01'. Open that one up. I picked this one mainly because I wanted green as part of that finished example, but you can pick any image you like. What I find though, is before we get started it's quite nice to get rid of some of the detail. It would depend on your image and the effect you want at the end. For the one you saw at the beginning I went to 'Filter', 'Noise'. I went to this one called 'Median'. You can see, you can crank it right up, crank it down. Just get rid of some of the detail to make it more look a little bit more painterly, let's click 'OK'. 
Next thing I want to do is put my-- you could put a logo here, copied and pasted from Illustrator. I'm just going to grab the Type Tool. The font size is going to be quite big, about 900, maybe even bigger. 1000, and in terms of the font here, I'm using this one called Remachine. Just because it's a nice kind of script. I'm going to click once, type a 'G'. Doesn't really matter what color it is. Go to the 'Move Tool', stick in the middle. Now Remachine is a font that I've included in your exercise files. Here it is here, it's in '08 Transform', under Font. It's a font by Mans Grayback, and it's for personal use only. If you want to use this font for commercial use, read the license, download it, pay for it, it's a pretty awesome font. I like it because it's got kind of a swirl to it. 
So, for this to work we need to clip the image inside of the text. We did this in an earlier video, have a little think, wreck your brain, you're like, "How do I crop the text inside of here?" Away here, you go do it. If you can't remember let's practice again. So we need the image above the text, which we can't do because it's locked, but we know we can unlock a background by double-clicking it. They call it green, give it a name, and then we can stick it above. And with this top one selected, go to 'Layer'. I'll go to this one called 'Create Clipping Mask'. Now with your Move Tool I'm going to move it around because I want one of the pigeons involved. Not really sure why. 
The last thing we're going to do is we're going to merge these two here. You should do a 'Save As' now so you've got a backup copy. So I have two versions, this one before, we went along and wrecked it, but it's wrecking time. So I'm going to have both of these selected. I click the top one, hold shift, click the second one, so they're both selected. And this little flyout menu here, there's one in there, says 'Merge Layers'. It's going to squish them together, never to be pulled apart again. But don't worry, you got your backup. 
One other thing we might do is a new layer, a little turned up page here. And we're going to go to 'Edit', 'Fill'. We're just going to fill it with black. Click 'OK', and make sure this layer is at the bottom here. It doesn't matter, you could fill it with white, or any color. It looked kind of cool on black when I was working on it. Work on the green layer here. I'm going to zoom in a little bit. What I want to do now is I'm going to use the Liquify Tool. So let's go to 'Filter', and come down here to this, 'Liquify'. Background disappeared, that's okay. I'm going to zoom in a little bit, and what we want to do is we're going to use the Forward Warp Tool. We're going to pick a brush size that kind of fits within, you can see, I'm using the square brackets to make it go bigger. Or you can drag it up here under Tool Size. And now it's kind of being as careful or as not careful as you want. 
I'm just clicking and dragging like we're smearing the paint. You can see, you can kind of accidentally go out. We'll do that on purpose in a minute. So it depends on what you're looking for. I'm just kind of doing a little Stroke so I'm not trying to do the whole thing in one go, just about. So I'm clicking, dragging, try not to go off the line too much. Clicking, dragging. I'm okay with a couple of those bends. And then this one here, I want it to kind of swirl down across that one. There was a bit up here that I missed. I'm going to use a smaller brush size just to kind of smear him as well. 
You might go over it a second time if you're not liking what you've got. I'm happy enough with it, it's kind of cool, not too smeary. Now I want a couple of little drips so I'm going to use the exact same tool. I'm just going to use a really small paintbrush. There's two things you need to do. One is we need to kind of get it going, by clicking, and I do one there. I'm clicking and dragging across. Maybe a slightly bigger brush. So 45. Strain it up in, Dan. Wow, it's terrible. I'm going to do one there. I'm just clicking and dragging, and maybe another one over here. So that gets us kind of path way there but then we're going to use these two tools here. Remember from the last video, we're going to use Bloat and Pucker. 
So Bloat, pick a brush size, I'm going to pick something that size, I'm just kind of, click on these ends here. I'm trying to make it look like there's a bit of a drip going. Bigger brush size, there we go. That one I don't want one on, that one I do. I like to use the Pucker Tool as well. Same sort of thing, just kind of click it in there to make it a bit thinner. Here we go. Same with this one, I'm going to try and make it a little bit thinner as it's dripping down. Same with this one here, a bit too thick there, buddy. That's going to be our paint, kind of drips. I want to like one of these to have a drop. So what I'm going to do is, I'm going to click 'OK'. So this is going to be it for the dragging this smearing paint around. we're going to click 'OK'. Looks a whole lot nicer against the black. 
What I want is like a little drip drop that you saw at the beginning there. I'm just going to use the Elliptical Marquee Tool. Select a chunk of it. Maybe this bit there. Copy it, and paste it, and with my Move Tool I'm going to position it somewhere there. Maybe shrink it down a little bit, it's a bit too big, using my transform tool, 'Command T' on a Mac, 'Control T' on a PC. Now I'm going to go in, and what I could do, I'm actually happy enough with that but you could go into now, on its own layer, and start distorting it. It's maybe a bit too perfectly round. But you could go to Liquify now and push it around a little bit. I probably want to fix this bit up, but I'm not going to. What I'm going to do though is show you a couple little tricks. 
One is, if it's on white you might add a Drop Shadow to it, looks kind of cool. And, I vowed never to use it, but I want to add a Bevel and Emboss. It might actually work in this case. I'm going to select both of these two layers because the drop is on a different layer from this green thing. And up here again, I'm going to do the exact same thing, 'Merge Layers'. Now with it selected I'm going to go down to 'fx' and I'm going to go to 'Bevel and Emboss'. I've already played with this, that's why mine kind of came out okay. Preview 'on', Preview 'off'. But follow me, into 'Bevel', then play around with things like, how deep you want it to be. And the size, it will depend on the size of your image. The size of the text you're using. So it's all going to be a little different but mainly Depth Size, and make sure it's on Inner Bevel. In my case I'm going to make it come from the top left. I feel like I've gone maybe too far. So I'm going to soften it down a bit, actually change the size of it. Actually, change the depth of it, is what I want. It's looking kind of 3D-ish, let's click 'OK'. That could be it. 
I'm going to do one last thing, it's the 'Burn Tool. We'll actually use the Dodge Tool as well. The Burn Tool, remember, we've used in a couple of tutorials now. On this layer here, as long as it's not a Smart object, won't work, but with the Burn Tool, I've set it to Mid Tones and I've got a brush size, what is that? 125. I'm just going to kind of-- can you see, I'm just painting that in there. Just to make it a bit more extreme, say on some of these parts. It depends on what you want to do, right? I'm going to cast a bit of a shadow on to that as well because that G is above it. So I'm just kind of messing around now with some of those lighter parts. You could do this completely instead of the Bevel. 
And what I probably want to do, is definitely on these little drip symbols here, so you, clicking and dragging. This one as well, you. I made terrible drips, hope yours is better. So those are them, let's look at the Dodge Tool. It's the opposite of the Burn Tool. Click and hold it down, there's the Dodge Tool. I'm going to do the same thing but on the highlights. You can see, just clicking a few times. Clicking gives highlights. Where else do I want them? Maybe on this thing here. Make that side shiny. That's just ugly, but we're getting the idea, right? 
So that is how to make a pinky drippy thing. Doesn't really matter what the object is. You could get some clip art, you could get love heart. It could be some social media icons, but in this case we've done some scripted text. I like it. All right, on to the next video.