> PHOTOSHOP USER>^ AUGUST 2019[ 88 ]
As you can see, our cityscape involves lots of individual text
layers and a lot of transforming. With a little planning and
customization, it goes pretty smoothly and turns out to be
a lot of fun.STEP ONE: GATHER THE MATERIALS
Just like with photo compositing, it helps to gather your
materials up front. In this case, I used a spreadsheet to help
manage a list of words I wanted to use (Google Sheets
and Microsoft Excel are two popular choices). Using Excel,
I dumped my list of about 60 words in randomly, then
sorted alphabetically. Early on, I discovered that sometimesI’d need to search by word size, as well, so I used the
Formulas>Text>Len[gth] function to get the number of
characters in each cell, then sorted by that result (see next
page). Using an external tool helped me put aside worrying
about choosing words so I could focus on the design.
The point of choosing words up front is to keep us from
having to constantly think about words while we’re putting
the pieces together. Having a list to choose from reduces
the brainwork involved in making decisions, letting you
focus on the design elements. In this project, we’re not
worried about repetition or sentences, so having a sortable
list helps quite a bit.Have you ever finished a project where you realized that if only you’d done a little prep, the actual
work would have gone pretty quickly? This issue, let’s build a small cityscape out of text and look at
a handful of tricks to make the process easier and more fun—in other words, getting our tools out of
the way of our creativity!TEXTSCAPE WORKFLOW
SCOT TVALENTINE
Photoshop Proving Ground