Faking text extrusion

[Mike Gondek]

Photoshop does not have an option, to do that well, but Illustrator does:

effect >> 3D >> Extrude and bevel (turn up persepective)

object >> envelope distort >> make with warp (thsi will add some curve to extruded object)

If you want to hand draw this in PS, you can drag some guides out, and then use shift in between clicks to draw straight lines. You could later use
edit >> transform >> warp if you want to add curvature to your extruded type.

This is much more of an Illsutrator project, so hope you can use that method.

The font company comicraft (www.comicbookfonts.com) has many fonts and dingbat fonts that have that Kaaapow! Blaaamo! Krunnch! style.

[Del Holford]

Scott Selby’s book that came with version 7 had a cheap and easy way to create an extrusion. You can use whatever font you want. Unfortunately someone borrowed the book so I can’t give you a page number or the exact title of that book.

Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS2
Charlotte Public Television

[Eric Chard]

Thanks fellas.

Considering that the old Deluxe Paint could do this in a snap (Grab anything, use it as a brush, draw lines, curves, arcs with it)….. frustrating.

++++++++++++++++
“Putting the HARM in ‘harmonica’ since 2005.”
++++++++++++++++

[Mike Gondek]

Sounds like you want a custom brush, from your recent post, though I do not see that doing a nice job, even if you set spacing to 1%.

To enable a custom brush shape:
Go to you brushes palette, click on brush tip shape on the left and begin to paint

TO creaate your own cusotm brush
Dra a rectangle marque around the artwork you want to use
edit >> Define Brush Preset

You will see a grayscale version of your artwork appear as a brsuh in your brush tip shapes.

Sorry I can’t remember Deluxe paint, that was on my commodore 20 years ago last time I seen it. Let me know if I did not understand your question.

[Eric Chard]

Unless there’s a way to draw a line (or curve) WITH a custom brush, it wouldn’t work. Sometimes those basic programs can do stuff easily that is extremely involved in Photoshop. And buying another 700 dollar program (Illustrator) seems silly.

Fortunately, googling “extruded text photoshop” brings up a lot of rather involved ways of doing it. Like I said, 8-bit programs do this much easier. Rather amusing, really.

++++++++++++++++
“Putting the HARM in ‘harmonica’ since 2005.”
++++++++++++++++

[Jimmy Brunger]

I must admit…I do find this RIDICULOUS that PS can’t do something this simple..

My old Quantel Paintbox Express which is 10 years old just has a ‘solid’ button you can add to an object and 8 direction arrows for where you want the extrusion to go, choose a fill colour and you’re done! I can’t see how that takes much programming to achieve that!? If that old Paintbox can do it (it’s sooooo basic), surely something as (otherwise) ACE as PS can!

I’ve lost count of the amount of times a client has said “can you make that text look a bit 3D” (without wanting to pay for real 3D) and there’s no quick way to do it without jumping into Illustrator, pulling in your secene flattened and trying to match the perspective and then save it out, iport and re-position back in your PS comp. THEN, if you want to change the text…don’t even get me started!

Sorry, rant over..but I’ve been waiting for this simple command/filter/layer style since PS5.

*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Mike Gondek]

You can draw a straight line with any brush, by holding down shift while dragging.

To make this follow a curve you need to draw a curve with the bezier tool. The with the curve selected, go to the path palette and choose stroke path.

I agree though would be nice to have more tool for better 3D in Photoshop. From your post sounds like you could do this on a curve which is really cool (Aldus freehand long time ago used to have “fountains” – not sure if Macromdia or Adobe brought that feature back)

Can you tell me though if what you are trying to do looks like the blue hipflask type
https://www.comicbookfonts.com/fonts/DL/catalog.html?item=fonts:dl244&sid=0001ndVa74LQBoYTjY0g2i5

I want to make sure ther is no outer bevel layer style or similar solution I can come up with for you.

[Mike Velte]

Try this;
Create a bold letter or word with a lighter color and a contrasting stroke. Hold down the Alt key and With the Move tool, select the layer in the composition and click the Down and then left arrows. Each time that you do, PS creates a duplicate layer one pixel offset. Create a new Group of the layers and merge the group.

[Eric Chard]

Holding down the SHIFT key while dragging gives you a HORIZONTAL or VERTICAL line, not a “straight” line.

Clicking, then holding down the shift key and clicking AGAIN gives you a straight line at any angle. with the brush, but with no preview, which is very lame.

++++++++++++++++
“Putting the HARM in ‘harmonica’ since 2005.”
++++++++++++++++

[Jimmy Brunger]

The alt-move-copy trick works quite well as long as your extrusion is one of 45 degree angles..anywhere inbetween and you get jaggys between each layer where it had moved more than 1 pixel at a time. This method matches the old Paintbox command though, which is good to know. Ta.

..Though you still have to select diff elements of the extrusion by hand to ‘mock-shade’ it though to give a 3D feel unless it’s a solid colour, aswell as there being no option to match perspective…but I suppose jumping over to Illustrator would be more viable if you’re going into that muchy depth and accuracy. Still a bit of a pain though.

I tried the stroking path with custom brush thingy…which seems to take a long time to set up accurately, plus like Eric said you can’t ‘preview’ where it will go. Also if you’re in 1.42 widescreen ratio then the brush shape gets squashed in the X and you have to manually re-position and stretch your stroke layer back out to fit the original word.

I just don’t see hat would be so hard about adding it as a layer style like drop shadow..with distance in pixels and an angle wheel? The perspective thing would be trickier, but something like a multipoint corner pin would do it, where you can place the pinning points before distorting it. I bet it’s not that hard..AE has got it standard.

Come on CS3 – show us what you’ve got!!!

*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0