Neat things to do This is going to be just stuff that's kind of fun to play around with. The first thing on here is Kai Krause's Electric Aura, updated for Photoshop 3/4.

Start out with some large white text on a black background. Now blur it with a radius of about 22 to 27 pixels. Now, Find Edges (Filter/Stylize/Find Edges) and then invert (Ctrl-I) I know, now it doesn't look like there's anything there, but try Equalizing it (Image/Map/Equalize in 3.0x, or Image/Adjust/Equalize in 4). You can't read the text any more, but it is kind of an interesting metal texture, don't you think? Try rendering lighting effects using a text-filled alpha channel as texture, and you get an embossed effect.




THe great thing is, this isn't restricted to text: here's what the "Enki" photo looks like (when reduced to grayscale) after this same technique (and some fiddling)



What I did was, I reduced it to grayscale, then duplicated the black channel (ie, I had an extra copy of the image in case it turned out ugly.) I then did the technique as above, then loaded the duplicate original as a selection and filled it with the saved (color) version. It sounds more complicated than it really is. This is what it looks like on a closeup of a real face (with heavy tweaking) :



Can you guess who this is? Bill!

I did a lot of tweaking on this one... Basically I did the same thing as on Enki, but instead of filling with "Saved" I used the (non-bundled) Sine Blobs filter on it, then rendered lighting effects after sharpening the alpha channel.

Or, try Clouds using the original technique (but without blurring). You get this:



(Try setting this as wallpaper--it's seamless!)


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