Lessons

Lesson Info

Weaving Stroke Highlight

Now becomes the difficult part. I wanna get it so it looks like certain portions of this text is going above other portions of the text, and it's going below it in other areas. So that here, this little curve on the letter D, I want it to look like it's above this vertical bar, and that's not the easiest thing to do. So let's go to the layer that's above. That's the one that contains the logo in general with the highlight on it. I can turn that off and on, you can see which layer I'm talking about. And I'm gonna end up duplicating that layer. I'll just type Command J to duplicate, Control J if I'm in Windows. And then this already has what's known as a vector mask attached to it. That's what's defining where the logo shows up. And that's where if I were to grab my arrow tool and type Command H, remember we hid the outline earlier, you'd be able to see that this is made out of a path. Well, I wanna use a second path to further limit where this shows up. The problem is I can't have two v...

ector masks on a single layer. I already have one, which you're seeing right now, and I can't have a second, but I can cheat. The way I'm gonna cheat is I'm gonna put this layer into a folder, at least that's what I call it, 'cause that's what the icon looks like. It's really known as a group. If I just click on the group icon, I'm gonna get an empty group, and I'd have to then drag this layer into the group. If you only have one layer selected, you can get that layer to go into a group as you create it if you hold the Shift key. So I'm holding Shift right now, and I'll click right here. Now, this layer is inside that group, and you can tell it is because it's indented, unlike the other layers. Let's name our group. I'm gonna call this logo highlights above. So that's the part of the logo that is gonna look as if it's above other parts of the logo. And the only reason we put it into this group is because this layer has a vector mask that defines where the logo appears, and I want to use a second vector mask to further limit where it shows up. So now that it's sitting inside of this group, I can add a vector mask to the group itself. To do that, I'll go to the Layer menu, I'm gonna come down to Vector Mask, and now, I just have to decide if I wanna reveal everything to start with or hide everything to start with. And I think what I'm gonna use is the choice of Reveal All. And therefore, this isn't doing anything yet. It's not hiding any part of this layer at all. Let's make sure we're in the Pen tool. And what we're gonna do now is draw a path that we're gonna have hide part of this layer. So I wanna hide this portion right in here. To do so, I'm gonna click right here, right where I see this corner, I'll click and let go to define a point. And then, as long as I don't drag with my mouse held down, instead I just click and let go, click and let go like this. I can tell it I would like to hide this portion, and I'm just gonna come down here and go right to where that little joint is. And if I want a curved line instead of a straight one, I click and I drag, and you get these little handles that come out. Well, what I want to do with those handles is I'm not looking at the one that my mouse is on. I'm looking at the one that's coming out the opposite end. It's like a little seesaw or teeter-totter. If I move one side, the other side moves with it. Then what I want to do is get the angle of that handle that's coming out the left side of this point to match the angle of the line for the part of the logo I'm looking at, that swoop that's coming around the bottom of the letter D. So if I were to do that, I need to get the angle right about like that. Then, I'm gonna click here to finish this particular point. And when I do, I'm not gonna let go. I'm gonna drag, that's gonna allow me to pull out a handle, and I need to get that handle. Just imagine it looks like a seesaw or teeter-totter, and there's another side to it right where my mouse is. Well, I need the part where my mouse is to be at the same angle as where that little swoop on the letter D is at. So I'll bring it down right about there. All right, it just thought about this top portion, we just haven't told it what to do with that path yet. So I'm gonna go up here into my Options bar. I'm gonna click on this icon, and right now, it says combined shapes, which in general means let this layer show up where I've drawn this path. I'm gonna choose Subtract from Front Shape, and that should take away from this layer hiding the area that is inside that shape. Watch what happens when I do, look just below where this path is, because once we hide the upper portion, that layer style that's adding that highlight should update, thinking that that vertical portion that's inside the path doesn't exist. So when I choose this, watch what happens. Well, gee, it looks like nothing happened. Well, that's 'cause I was thinking a little ahead of myself. Well, all this is doing is hiding the layer that is inside this group. It's not gonna change what that layer down there is shaped like. So all I'm gonna do is something a little weird. I'm gonna take this inner shadow that's here, where it shows up is currently defined by what's in this layer. And I'm gonna drag it up here. That means let it be defined by what this is doing. That means it will include the path we're currently working on. So I'm gonna drag this up to here. Then, the only thing we need to do is ensure that our path is actually in that vector mask, and is not just sitting all on its own. We can find out if it's in there or not by looking in the Paths panel. So let's go to the Paths panel. Ah, you see here, if it says Work Path, that means it's just all by itself. It has no idea it's supposed to be related to that layer. And right down here, it says Vector Mask. That's where we want it to be. Well, we can easily get it down there, and we should only need to do that once. This is still highlighted, it's still selected. I'm just going to choose Cut, and then I'm gonna click in my Channels panel on the vector mask and choose Paste. Now it's in the vector mask, and if I go to my Layers panel, we'll actually see it sitting right there. So now look at it. Notice that highlight is going through there. So what have we done? Well, what we've done is we've made it so that we have a duplicate layer on top, and that duplicate layer, if we were to hide some of the layers that are underneath, has that little portion hidden. And we have the layer style that's there, the inner shadow attached to the group itself. So anything we do to hide part of that group will affect where that inner shadow appears. When it was attached to the layer that was below, then it wouldn't change where it appears by messing with this mask. This mask would just make that layer disappear, but it wouldn't make that inner shadow recalculate where it should be. But attaching it right up here to the layer group itself, then it works just fine. And then all we do is turn these other two layers back on, and they'll fill in underneath, and that gives us our little highlight. Now we just need to go around any other parts of this logo where the highlight should continue across and do the same thing. So let's do that for the rest of the first word that's here. So here we have the letter I, and I want it to look as if the letter I comes up, and then imagine you're writing it with a pen. You write it like this, you make your way up here, and then when you come back down like this to finish the letter, that would be on top because it was done afterwards. And so right here, that should look like it's on top. So that's the second part I wanna work on. I'm just gonna grab my Pen tool, and I'm gonna try to hide this. So I'm gonna click right where the edge of this letter starts hitting right there, where I want it to start disappearing. I'm going to click, and I'm gonna drag, because you drag whenever you want a smooth curve shape. And I'm not looking at the handle my mouse is on, I'm looking at the handle that's pointing downward. I want it to be at the exact same angle the edge of the text is at right as it comes in and hits this point that I'm working with. And that would be an angle just like that. I don't want the handle to be overly long, so I'm gonna go about like that, no more than about halfway across that gap I'm working across. Then I'm gonna click right here. That's where I want it to look as if the edge of the letter continues with, and I'm gonna click there, and I'm not gonna let go. I'm gonna drag, so I get those little handles. And this time, I'm thinking about the handle my mouse is on. I want it to match the angle of the text when it leaves this point. That means the edge of the letter G as it continues upward. So I would say about like that. And I want the length to be no more than about half the width of that little gap we're trying to work with, and I'll let go. Now I can click over here, and if I want to, I can click up here. I'm just telling you it should be hidden. And I'm just gonna tell it to hide this whole area all the way over to there. So we've just hid that. And it's only that, there's a duplicate layer underneath that contains that letter that makes it show up at all. If we were to hide those layers that are underneath, these two sets, you'd see that that part's gone, and that's what's causing that little highlight to come down now, and that's what we ended up adding. Now sometimes, I need to fine tune the positioning of these points, 'cause I might not be overly precise when I put them in. I might be off by a pixel or so. So you can type Command H to hide this path and see the end result. And I can see it's off a little bit right there. It looks like it's off by like one pixel or something. So I can type Command H again to bring it back. And if I want to adjust that, you can grab a point. When you're in the Pen tool, there's a bunch of keyboard shortcuts you can use to get to all these other tools that are associated with the Pen tool and to get to the arrows. If you know those shortcuts, go for it and use it. Otherwise, you can manually click on the other tools. The one I want is the hollow arrow. With the hollow arrow, I can click on the line itself and then grab the point. And if I wanna move the point one pixel at a time, I can use the arrow keys on my keyboard. I'm just gonna snug it to the right, and then I'll type Command H to see if it looks better. And I think it does. Before, there was like a little notch there that isn't there anymore. But if I needed to further adjust it, I'd type Command H to bring it back, and I can come in here and fine tune the angle of these and everything else, and type Command H to check my results, and Command H to bring it back. So now, that looks as if it's going underneath, and then this part here is coming on top. So now if that's coming on top, here, I want it to look... Well, I don't have to completely switch every time. I think in this case, I want this to look like it's on top in that this swoop going this way goes underneath. That means that this little highlight should continue across. So let's hide this little portion which is gonna cause that to go across. Now, if you click away from something when you're in the Arrow tool, you're gonna find those paths disappear. They're still there. If you were to click and drag like this, you'd be able to highlight 'em, and if you just click out here in an empty area with that Arrow tool, they'll go away. But I can just grab my Pen tool, and in this case, I'm gonna click right here where that intersection is. I need a straight line here, 'cause this edge should look straight, and I'm gonna click right where it would join up again. But in this case, it's not quite as easy what to hide, because it's not like a full letter, like the letter I, or this full little bar sticking up. This is part of that. So I have to decide where could I split it. Well, I could try to split it through like where the little highlight ends, but I don't wanna have to do that. I'm just gonna hide a small portion of this, just enough to get that little highlight to show up. So I'm gonna click down here, I'll click up here, and I'll click back where I started. And when I do, hopefully that is going to make the highlight go across. If it doesn't, then what happened is we are no longer working on the vector mask. What you should do is before you use the Pen tool, make sure that this little vector mask is active. If it's active, its corners would be highlighted, and they're not right now. If they weren't highlighted, then you're gonna find that your path doesn't do anything, and that's because the path isn't part of this. If that ever happens, then click on the Paths panel, and I bet you you're gonna have a work path. So just come up to the Edit menu, choose Cut, and then click on the vector mask that's in your Paths panel or over here in your Layers panel, click on it there. You'll see that the corners are highlighted. You should do that anytime you're about to use the Pen tool to draw one of these shapes is make sure that this thing is active. But now I can choose Paste to put it in there, and it's as if I made it while that was active. All right, now we might run into an issue, and that is we're not hiding the full part of this loop. So right where this cuts across, we might get some artifacts. Let's find out, I'm gonna type the letter H. Yeah, do you see that little highlight breaking across? That's because I wasn't careful with where I stopped hiding this area, and we're getting our little highlight on the edge. So now, let's get fancier. I wanna hide just this effect right here, and to do so, I'm gonna use a layer mask. So this is a vector mask, meaning it's made with the Pen tool. I'm gonna add a layer mask, so let's go to the Layer menu, let's go to Layer Mask, and I'm gonna tell it to reveal all so it doesn't hide things to start with. Then I'm gonna grab my Paintbrush tool. I'm gonna paint with black with a relatively hard edge, and I'm gonna try to get rid of that. But when I try, I'm gonna have an issue. Well, the first issue that I have is up here in my Options bar. Let me choose undo, so I can undo what I've done, and my opacity is not at 100. I need this to be at like default settings. So get your opacity at 100, your flow at 100, smoothing doesn't matter. But main thing is both of those in normal. That's like as if you've never used the tool before, that's what it'll be set to. But now, let's try to paint across there and hide that. It just moved the issue down, because we just hid more of this letter which just moved the highlight down. So that's not doing what I want. Doesn't matter if I continue to paint and try to hide it, it's just gonna keep being in there. That's because we need to get fancier. Anytime you have an effect, like a drop shadow, or in our case, an inner shadow, and you hide part of that layer, it's gonna change where that appears. But there is a special feature, and let me show you where it is. When we're working on this layer, I'm gonna come down here to the letters fx, and I'm gonna choose Blending Options. In Blending Options, there's all sorts of settings, but we're just gonna use this one. It's called layer mask hides effects. By effects, it means layer styles, also known as layer effects, these drop shadows, these inner shadows, and all that. This will force it to hide those effects instead of helping determine where they're calculated. So let's turn that on, and when I do, then it works. So we got a little fancier. So let's see, that comes around, is on top. This comes around, is underneath. And you might think you need to deal with this little highlight, that it should extend over, but that's not actually the case. Right now, we're working only on the highlight. We're gonna do a second pass where we work on this thickness. And when we do, any area where we made the highlight extend across somewhere where it wouldn't usually, on the opposite side, we're gonna extend that thickness across. And when I do, that little part there that looks a little odd, because the highlight doesn't snug all the way up against it will be fixed, because this dark area will extend across. So for now, let's continue thinking about the highlight and decide what we wanna do with the next letter. Here I have the letter I, just imagine you're drawing it with a pen. You would draw like this, you would come up like this, and then this could go below right here, because I wouldn't add this slash until afterwards, or we don't have to do it in the order you would draw it, you could do it however you'd want, if you want this to be on top. But then I'm gonna have this other part. If I have that go on top, I'll have this part go underneath, and then that'll go on top. So I'm gonna work this part first. I want it to look as if that's on top, and therefore, this highlight needs to extend across. So again, I'm in my Pen tool over here in my Paths palette, or my Paths, my Layers panel. I see that my vector mask is active, so hopefully it stays that way, although sometimes, it seems to just magically become unselected. I'm gonna click right where that little notch is, where the two letter forms connect, I'm gonna click, and I want a curve. So I'm gonna drag. I'm gonna get that bottom handle to be at the same angle as the edge of the text that's there, so right about like that. I'm gonna get it so the handle is no more than about halfway across the gap. Then I'm gonna move to the other spot where it connects, I'll click. And I noticed when I added that dot over in my layers, my vector mask became deselected, and I think that's because I didn't have my path visible. I think that's, when it's selected, it should go there, but we're gonna have to copy and paste this one. If you wanna see how I would do it to continue it and not have that happen, I'll choose Undo. And if we had these visible, I'm assuming it would've added to the path, but when I had them hidden, because I had typed Command H sometime in the past, it thought that if I click, I can't work on what's hidden. So let's see if it works now. I'll try it again. Click, drag. No more than halfway across. Yeah, if you look, it stayed active. So just make sure your path is visible when you want to add to it, otherwise it's gonna create a work path. I'm gonna click right where the two join. Again, I want a curve, so I end up pulling out, I get the top edge to match the angle of the text. Don't go any more than halfway across. Got it like that. Now I gotta decide how much more to hide. I can go all the way around the letter I if I want to, or I can just make a short thing. If I do a short thing, I'll have to paint on my layer mask to get rid of any residue. So for me, I'll just come up here. When you click and let go, you get straight lines, and I'll come over and try to make my way around. Go like this, down here, over there. You gotta be careful though. If I click where I started, I think I got a little close here and it ended up trying to hide something over there. But I think it looks fine actually, just glancing at it. But sometimes you'll have to fine tune it. But anyway, right there, we got our highlight going through. So this looks like it is going underneath. And once we get our dark area to continue over here, that will continue the feeling that that part here is going underneath. Now, if that's going underneath, let's make it look like it's going on top here. To make it look like it's going on top, I need this little highlight to continue across. So I'm gonna click right about here, and if this needs to be a curve, I need to drag and get that bottom angle to match the angle of the text. And then up here, click right where that is, right up. And feel free once you get used to this to fast forward, 'cause I'm just gonna be repeating the same thing over and over again. But there, I got my little highlight continuing across so it looks like that's on top. I'll type Command H to see if there's any residue, or if I need to fine tune it, and I think it's off just the tiniest bit right there. Command H again. And I can use my white arrow. If you click away from the line and then back on it, you can get individual point, and then use the arrow keys to move it, Command H, and I think that looks fine now. All right, so that looks like it's above. Then here, it should look like it goes below. And that means this highlight needs to continue across. To get that highlight to continue across, I need to hide this upper portion. So right now, I can't see my path, so I know anytime I can't see my path, if I grab my Pen tool, I'm not gonna be working on that. So let's go on our Layers panel, click on that vector mask, and make sure we can see our paths. And I'm just gonna hide this little portion up here. So I'll click right where the two would join. I'll click right over here. It needs to be a straight line so I don't need to drag. And then go up a little bit, over a little bit, down a little bit. I know there's probably gonna be some residue up here, but I'm gonna type Command H and check my positioning. And you might be confused by this little part here, where that highlight should continue all the way across. Well, remember on this portion here, we hid a little chunk just to the left of it, and I betcha we hid too much. I'm gonna type Command H again in just a moment to bring it back and we'll find out. But first up here, this is what I was looking for, residue. That's where I need to work on my layer mask. Now, I can type Command H, bring that back. You can see that's right where the edge of my painting was, or my path was. I'll just paint with black right there to hide the effect, and then I no longer have that little effect. Let's go back to our Arrow tool in this case, and let's see about adjusting this little piece. It was causing this highlight to appear, but you don't need to hide anything more than just that little edge. So I might grab a few of these points that are here, and just move them this way to allow that highlight. And let's see here, there we go. And I hope I didn't move them too far. I think I might have moved that one just a little too far. I can use the arrow keys on my keyboard to be a little more precise about it. And let's click away. And now I can see that little highlight continuing across. I'm gonna fine tune the position of all these things. So let's just click and drag here to see where they are. And I'll grab this guy up there, oh, get him only to where he needs to go. Needs to be right about there. Command H to check work, needs to move up a little pixel, up arrow. You can only up arrow when the path is visible, not when it's hidden. All right, so that looks like it's going above. Looks like it's going underneath because of that highlight. And then we could continue on. Looks like it's above there. And over here, I want it to look like it's going under. So this highlight here should continue. Remember, fast forward whenever you have done enough of this where you feel comfortable. No need to see me do it over and over and over again unless you, I don't know, feel like you're being soothed by it or something. Look right there, get that angle to match the angle of the letter. Don't go across more than about half of the gap, otherwise you're gonna influence more than half of the result. And then get the top like that, and then go to the left. And wherever I cut through, I'm gonna have an artifact, and that's where I'll end up painting on my layer mask. And I could type Command H to see it, and I actually don't see it. But if there's anything there at all, that's a mess up, I would end up painting on the layer mask. I can see I'm off a little bit here, so let's refine it. I'm gonna go to my Arrow tool, that's what you use for adjusting things. And if you have all the points selected, just click away and then click back, and you can get individual ones. And that either means this angle is off a little bit, or more likely, the position of the point itself. I'm gonna arrow it to the right. Command H, yeah, that looks better. So now it looks as if that's going underneath. And then we got this. And one more time, this should go underneath. So I'm gonna hide this little portion. Let's type Command H, make sure our path is visible, and you might as well glance over here to make sure that the vector mask is active, but it's gotta be, 'cause we're seeing its contents. And I'll click here since this should be a curve, drag, up here, drag, but not too far, over a little bit, back where I started. Command H to look both for artifacts on this edge and if I positioned these right. That's looking pretty good. I might be able to get the position to be a little better. There we go. And I think we've done the highlights. The only place we haven't done are the two dots here, and it's a matter of deciding if you want them to be on top, or below, or as if these are integrated. I'm gonna make them integrated in this case.