350
1
Begin your pipe by drawing a simple rectangle with the
Marquee tool, and filling it with a mid tone gray (you can
always add color later).
8
Draw a new selection with the Elliptical Marquee that’s
smaller than the original one, and add shading to make
the inside of the pipe – darker at the top and on the left.
4
With the O A key still held down, drag the ellipse to
the other end: hold the S key after dragging to move
it horizontally only.
6
With the Marquee tool selected, nudge the selection a
couple of pixels to the right and fill with the same mid
gray. The bright rim looks better than a hard edge.
4
By nudging vertically and inversing the selection, only
the feathered bottom half of the cable is selected. We can
now use Brightness and Contrast to darken the edge.
W
HETHER IT’S MICROPHONE
cables, sewage pipes or chrome
cylinders, it’s fairly easy to create any kind of
tubular object directly in Photoshop.
Cables are drawn using the technique of
applying a brush stroke to a Pen-drawn path: as
long as the path is visible, any of the painting
tools can be easily made to run a smooth
stroke along it.
Pipes can be created at any length. Since
the shading is applied evenly along the pipe
by holding the Shift key as you paint with
the Dodge and Burn tools, it’s then easy to
stretch them to any length you want simply by
selecting half the pipe and dragging a copy
where you want it to go.
Bending pipes around curves is another
issue entirely, and the final step here shows a
simple way to achieve this effect.
Drawing pipes and cables
1
Drawing cables and wires is easier than you might think.
Start by using the Pen tool to draw a Bézier curve that
follows the line you wish the cable to take.
12
The third dimension
SHORTCUTS
MAC WIN BOTH
351
HOT TIP
When using
shading
techniques such as
those shown here,
it’s always better
to work with gray
objects rather
than colored ones:
shading can affect
the color as well as
the luminance of
an image. When
the shading is
exactly how you
want it, you can
put the color
in using Color
Balance, Curves or
your favorite tool.
7
With the end cap still selected, add some more shading
using the Burn tool. Bear the lighting position in mind:
we want more shadow at the bottom right than at the top.
2
Using the Dodge and Burn tools set to Highlights, hold
the S key to constrain the motion to horizontal, as
you drag from end to end of the rectangle.
3
Now use the Elliptical Marquee tool to select an ellipse in
the center of the pipe. Hold O A to make a copy as
you drag it to the left to form the end of the pipe.
5
Now brighten up the selected end of the pipe, using
Brightness and Contrast or Curves. It’s brighter than we
need, but this will just form the rim around the edge.
9
By applying a step effect using the Curves dialog, we can
make this pipe look more metallic. See Chapter 10 for
details on how to achieve this effect.
5
Now nudge the selection down twice as many pixels as
you nudged it up (that makes 6, in this instance) and
brighten up the top half in the same way.
6
After coloring the cable, it’s time for the shadow. Modify
your original path so that parts of the cable rise up from
the floor, then stroke the path with a soft-edged brush.
2
Now, with the Pen path still selected, switch to the
Brush tool and choose a hard-edged brush of the right
diameter – here, a 9-pixel brush was used. Now hit the R
key, and the path will be stroked with that brush.
3
Next, load up the pixels in the cable layer by holding
C L as you click on the layer’s name. Feather the
selection (a 3-pixel feather used here), and, with the Marquee
tool selected, nudge the selection up 3 pixels.
10
To bend the pipe into a curve, make a square
selection around it and use the Polar Coordinates
filter (Rectangular to Polar) to distort it. If the pipe is
positioned at the top of the square selection, the result will
be a very tight curve; if it’s positioned in the center, you’ll get
a larger curve. Make sure the initial selection is square or the
curve will be distorted. You can now take a section of this
curved pipe to join two straight pieces together.
How to Cheat in Photoshop CC
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