How to design a license plate in Photoshop

Pixel Perfect is the "perfect" show to help you with your Photoshop skills. Be amazed and learn as master digital artist Bert Monroy takes a stylus and a digital pad and treats it as Monet and Picasso do with oil and canvas. Learn the tips and tricks you need to whip those digital pictures into shape with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. In this episode, Ben shows you how to design a license plate in Photoshop.

Bert creates a fancy license plate using paths, text tool and layer effects.

Bert makes a realistic license plate! First, Bert creates the shape of the plate using the rounded corner rectangle tool and uses the shape as a path. To create the plate, Bert selects the path and adds color by using the gradient tool. To create a border for the plate, Bert creates a new layer and resizes the existing path using Edit>Transform Patch>Scale. Bert then uses the paint brush (turns off shape dynamics in the brush engine and adjusts the brush tip to create a solid line) and layer effects>stroke to create the border.

Bert adds text to the license plate with the text tool. However, his work is not done. In order to make the plate look realistic, Bert rounds the tips of the text by adding a gaussian blur in an alpha channel and adjusting the levels (image>adjust>levels). He finally fills the selection with color.

To create the illusion of a real license plate, Bert incorporates many layer styles, including drop shadow and bevel emboss. To make the text realistic, Bert also uses the bevel emboss layer style (both inner and outer bevel). As a final touch, Bert adds a highlight to the license plate by drawing a thick white line in a new layer (adjusting the opacity) and clipping it to the overall image.

Search Pixel Perfect on WonderHowTo for more Photoshop episodes from this Revision3 show.