Carved Type
by Nick Ustinov

This one is quite simple but you can play around with it for hours. Start new RGB image black background, white foreground. Type some text. Now, if you are using Photoshop 4.0, you must merge this type layer down by pressing Ctrl-E (or Cmd-E on Mac).
wpe2.jpg (2876 bytes) We will need one extra channel, so you should open channel palette (Window>Show Channels) and drag any of the existing channels to New Channel icon.

Fine. Now remove the marque by clicking type tool once again (don't type anything). Then use gaussian blur (Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur) with setting 1.0 or 2.0

Now Filter/Other/Offset.. 2,2. You will play with those values later. Then Select/Load Selection... Ok, now you just adjust levels of the selection Go to Image/Adjust/Levels... and play with it (make it darker this time).

wpe3.jpg (2893 bytes) This is nothing complex, right? But there are tons of variations now.. You can invert the image, invert the selection, fill type with a texture and so on. Hunders of variations.

© 1997 Nick Ustinov.