› ›kelbyone.com023››DOWN AND DIRTY TRICKSStep OneSte p TwoStep Three©Adobe Stock/oleguskStep Three: Now if you zoom in really close on the
detail of the cracks (Command-+ [PC: Ctrl-+]), you’ll
notice that the lines aren’t joined in most spots. We need
to close these lines so we can use the Magic Wand tool
to select each shard of glass.
Choose the Brush tool (B) from the Toolbox, then go to
the Options Bar and, in the Brush Picker, choose a simple
round brush and set the Size to around 1 pixel and the
Hardness to 100%. Now, with your Foreground color set
to white (press D, then X), proceed to draw a continuous
line as you trace along all the lines of the cracks. Don’t
worry about being perfect; in fact, a little shaky hand
adds to the cracked effect even more. Remember, trace
over all the crack lines.Step Four: Here’s a clever trick to see if selecting will work
now: Choose the Magic Wand tool (Shift-W) from the Tool-
box and, in the Options Bar, set the Tolerance to 15. Then,
click inside each shard of glass to select just that area. If it
selects a neighboring shard, then you still have a broken
line somewhere. Just deselect by pressing Command-D
(PC: Ctrl-D), then switch back to the Brush tool and trace
over the lines again.Step One: Begin by opening the
cracked-glass image. You may
also use a cracked-glass image
similar to this one; however, I’d
recommend using the provided
images so that you get a better
idea of how the technique works,
then proceed to experiment with
your own images.
[KelbyOne members may
download the files used in this
tutorial at http://kelbyone.com/
magazine. All files are for per-
sonal use only.]
Step Two: Once the file is open,
you’ll see we have a simple
cracked-glass image against a
black background. Open the Lay-
ers panel (Window>Layers) and
make a duplicate of the Back-
ground layer by pressing Com-
mand-J (PC: Ctrl-J).