Objectives:

• Simulate wood in PhotoShop
  
  Adapted from the book: Photoshop Most Wanted by Al Ward and Colin Smith

Simulating Wood in Photoshop

1. Start by opening Photoshop and making a new image with a size of 500 by 500 pixels. Make the background black.
   
   
2. Set your foreground and background colors to a couple of wood tones.
   
   
3. Create a new layer and make a selection by using the text tool. In my example I used the font named ITC Zapf dingbats and typed the letter "a."
   
   
4. Look in your layer window. Right-click the layer and duplicate it.
   
   
5. Add noise by clicking on Filter > Noise > Add Noise. Select the options for monochromatic and Gaussian. Set it to around 15.
   
   
   
   
6. Add a motion blur. Filter > Blur > Motion. Set the angle to 0 and the distance to 30.
   
   
7. Let's create some knots in the wood. Make a small circular selection somewhere on your wood. Select Filter > Distort > Twirl. Try this several times in various places with different settings.
   
   
8. Click on the layer style button in the layers window.
   
   
   
   
9. Select Bevel and Emboss. Change the style settings to Outer Bevel and the technique to Chisel Soft.
   
   
10. Select another style: Inner Shadow. Also try Inner Glow.
    
    
11. Take a look at your image. You can double-click on the styles in the layer window if you want to adjust the controls.
    
    
    
    

    Assignment

    1. Make a wood version of your name and save the file in your folder. Make a total of five different versions.
       
       
       
       
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