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[ 31 ]Step 20: Go to the B in the first
word and hold down the Option (PC:
Alt) key as you drag out a small oval
shape inside the top part of the letter.
You can press-and-hold the Spacebar
as you’re drawing the oval to reposi-
tion it. When you release the mouse
button, the new shape will knock
out the original shape.
Add another oval at the bottom
of the B, making sure to hold down
the Option (PC: Alt) key as you draw
(that key is what’s telling Photoshop
to knock out the shape area). You
can further adjust the position, and
scale the shapes by selecting their
paths with the Path Selection tool
and using Free Transform (Com-
mand-T [PC: Ctrl-T]).
Step 21: Now you can introduce
other custom shapes that might be
relevant to the overall design inside
the remaining letters. Just select the
Custom Shape tool at the bottom of
the shape tools in the Toolbar, and
click on the Shape thumbnail in the
Options Bar to open the Custom
Shape Picker. If you want access
to more shapes, just as we did
with the gradients in Step 16, go
to the new Shapes panel (Window>
Shapes), and load the Legacy Shapes
and More set. These will then appear
in the Custom Shape Picker. Here
we used a heart, an arrow, and sev-
eral other shapes that are included
in Photoshop’s custom shapes. (We
had to use Free Transform to rotate
the arrow into a vertical position.)
For the A, we simply used the
Direct Selection tool to select the
two points at the top of the inner
shape of the A, and dragged them
closer to the top of the letter. This
is where you can get creative with
different shapes, depending on the
theme of the design.