HOW TO MAKE TV SCAN LINE EFFECT IN PHOTOSHOP TUTORIAL

 

Credit by : photoshopCAFE

How to Make TV Scan Line Effect in Photoshop TutorialHey what's up CAFE crew, it's Colin Smith here from PhotoshopCAFE and this week, I 'm going to show you how to create a television scan line effect inside of Photoshop. All right, so this TV scan line effect, this is one of the first special effects that I actually did in Photoshop, and I even wrote about it in my book way back in 2002.  This was Photoshop Most Wanted.  I wrote it with Al Ward.  We can see it, it was foreword by Scott Kelby, and anyway, I wrote about this in here, so don't try and find this book because it's probably well out of print a long, long time ago. But, anyway, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you how to create the scan line effect.  It really did revolutionized how I started working in Photoshop because I unlocked the use of patterns and it's one of those things that people don't really use or haven't used because when you open up the patterns inside of Photoshop, you're met with this bubble wrap thing that's just hideously disgusting, and you usually close it, and then you just move on because you can't really use it for anything.  However, if you create your own patterns, you can actually do a lot of really cool things inside of Photoshop.  And this actually opened up a lot of exploration for me, and I started to explore a lot with different types of design things using guides and grids, and different things like that. Now, head over to PhotoshopCAFE. com.  We've got hundreds of tutorials and, you know, I 've got on grids and all kinds of things there that kind of branched off out of this, but at the very foundation is this TV scan line effect that I'm going to show you right now,where we can work with different Blend Modes and different layers and different patterns to achieve different results very easily.  And at the end of this tutorial, I'm going to show you a little masking trick that can really add a little bit more dimension to your scan line.  So, anyway, I know this is a real classic effect.  Some of you haven't used this before; some of you have, but check it out.  I hope you enjoy it.  So, without further ado, let's jump in and get started.  You can actually find the written tutorial for this as well on PhotoshopCAFE. com.  I'll just drop a link at the bottom there for you.  So, anyway,what we're going to be doing is we're going to be essentially creating patterns, and then,we're going to be using these repeating patterns to create effects.  And, in this case, we got this cool steampunk picture that I got from Adobe Stock and we're going to create some brushes. So why don't we start right now? We're going to choose New.  I said brushes, I meant patterns. So we're going to start, we're going to change this to pixels.  We're not going to be working in inches.  We're going to be working in pixels and we'll just call this-- Let's make it 4by 4.  So you're going to be wanting to work at different sizes and create different sized patterns because the different resolutions of images is going to give you different results. So we're going to start with the 4 by 4 and we can fill it with white.  Resolutions really doesn't matter, so we're just going to click OK. And now, what we want to do is we want to zoom in on that, so just grab a little magnifying glass and we'll just zoom in on that, all the way in.  And what we've got right now is 4 by 4, so what we need to do is fill the top two pixels with black.  So the best way to do that is we need very, very hardest brush and the hardest brush that exist is the pencil. And, notice, we got the foreground set to black right now and what we can do with the pencil is just go over it, and you can see there's the pixels there.  So what we've done, essentially, is we've created the first one.  So this is going to be a 4x4, meaning4 pixels by 4 pixels.  So what we're going to do is we're going to choose Edit, and then,we're going to go down to Define Pattern, and then we're going to call this one SLóforScan Lineó4x4, and just click OK.  So that's actually saved. And, now, we're going to create a new one.  We're going to choose File, New, and then,what we're going to do is we'll do an 8x8 and we'll just go there.  Once again, zoom in.  I'm just using the Alt key or the Option key, and then zooming in with my wheel.  Alright, so now we can just paint over the first part of that, so now we've got an 8x8; something, Edit, Define Pattern.  And we're going to call this SL 8x8.  All right, so let's make a really huge one.  What we're going to do is double the size of this one.  So we're just going to choose Image Size, and I'll show you what happens when we do this.  So we 're going to go, let's say 12x12 and click OK.  And, in fact, in this case, you can see its perfect.  It's nice, we can actually use that.  You can see there's no blurring on the edges there, so we can actually just go Edit, and we can Define Brush Pattern and SL 12x12. All right, so let's go for a really small one, so we're going to choose Image Size. Let's drop this one down to a 2x2.  So this is going to be a single pixel, and we can choose Edit, Define Pattern, SL 2x2.  So what I've done is I've actually just created a whole pattern set here.  All right, so as you can see, we're creating these scan lines in different sizes and that's for two different reasons: One is for a different type of effect. Sometimes a thick line is going to give a great effect, whereas, other times, a very fine line is going to provide more detail in your images, which is going to give it a completely different look and feel.  The other reason is the resolution.  If something thick on a low resolution image, when you go to a high res image, that can be so fine that you can't see it.  So one size doesn't fit all, so what we're actually doing is creating a pack of scan lines here.  And what I'll do just to help you out is if you just click right here, you can go to my website where I've got written tutorial.  I've got this video embedded as well.  But more importantly, I'll give you a set of patterns that you can use some scan lines here, so you can create them yourself or you can just grab the ones thatI've created.  So, anyway, moving right along, close this out, we don't need this anymore same with this one. All right, so here we are on our steampunk woman, and what I'm going to do is just create a new layer, and this is where we can do that scanline effects.  So what we need to do is just choose the Fills.  So you could go up under Edit, Fill, if you wanted, and then go that way, which I find is kind of slow.  I prefer to just use the Shift Delete, and that would be Shift-Backspace on Windows, and that opens up the Fill Dialogue Box.  And then we just change Contents from Foreground to Pattern, and then, click on the pattern here and we can see the patterns that we've created.  So we could go here and we could apply that one.  That's the very fine one that we created.  And it might be a little hard to see, but what we're going to do is we're going to create a couple of different ones,so let's just create a new layer on top of that one.  We're going to hide that and then just fill it again.  And, this time, we're going to go with the larger one, which is probably going to look huge.  And once again, we're going to create a new layer and we 're just going to Shift Delete, and we're going to go down to, say, I don't know, this one here, and that looks pretty good.  So we've got the different types of scan lines here. So let's have a look at how we can use these.  So what we're going to do is just change theBlend Modes.  A lot of the time, Overlay Blend Mode is going to look really good and we just need to drop the Opacity down a little bit.  So we can see that looks pretty good at that size.  Let's have a look at the bigger one.  Change that to Overlay Blend Mode and we 'll drop the Opacity down a little bit.  And stay tuned because I've got a few more optionsI'm going to be showing you pretty soon too.  Now we could go for the extremely fine one,which this one might be a little fine, but I don't know if you can see that.  It's not bad, actually, in Overlay Mode.  We can see, we could add those little lines in there. It's kind of cool with that they're very detailed.  Now, I've shrunken this image down.  You can see this is 100%, so with a higher resolution, you're obviously going to need to use a thicker line, and at a smaller resolution, you know, a file you might put on the web, you could use this very thin one. So what I'm going to do for variations, though, is we're going to this size here.  So let me go backup, so that's Overlay Mode.  There's another couple of models that seem to work quite well.  Multiply works really well if you want to just darken it, and then, we can just kind of play around with that, and it just shows the dark lines, hides the white lines.  And in the other option, of course, is we can go to the Screen Mode, and the screen will show the Lightened lines there.  See that? And it will hide the darkened ones.  So what you got to do is if you look at this, you'll see in the dark areas that shows up really well, and the lighter areas, you don't really see a lot going on.  That's the thing aboutScreen Mode.  So it really depends what kind of effect you want.  And, of course, if we go into Overlay Mode here, we get to see them still more in the darker areas, not as much the lighter areas, but it will show a little bit more. All right, so what we're going to do though is let's have a look here.  We've created this strong kind of scan line effect, but maybe we don't want it all over our model.  Maybe we just want it in the background areas.  So what we can do is create a Layer Mask.  We 're going to go down, click on New Layer Mask, and then, what we're going to do is we 're going to paint with black.  So if we change the foreground color to black, grab a brushónotthe pencil anymoreógrab the Brush Tool and we can see we've got the Opacity all the way up.  We got a Soft Brush and I'm just going to make it larger by hitting my right bracket key.  And, now, if I paint over here, what I can do is I can hide-- See that, that scanline effect? It's hidden from those areas that I'm painting.  So we could do that, make the brush a little smaller, bring it down there.  And, now, as you can see there, we 've got the scan lines just happening in the background and not on our subject anymore.  So we can go around there, just clean that up, and you could get this as exactly as you want.  A lot of the time, though, you might want it on the bottom, which I'm going to. I'm actually gonna go here and make that appear on the bottom.  The other thing I could do is work with pressure sensitivity.  So if I'm going to turn that on, if you're working off a Wacom tablet, you can turn on the pen pressure so you can fade it in; so you can have a darker areas and lighter in other areas, and just kind of blend it in like what I'm going to do here.  See I'm just kind of blending that in a little bit, and, maybe, just allow a little bit to go through on some of these edges, maybe on the gun there, and just kind of blending it with the scan lines and the non-scan line area.  You might put a little bit just on that shoulder there, or not.  It's up to you. Now, if you don't have the Wacom pen, you could just drop the Opacity down and just do it from a mouse, maybe 30 to 50%, so maybe I'm going to put a little bit on the top of the hat there, kind of like it there.  And then, there we go.  We have, essentially, just blended in our TV scan lines there, before and after.  And we could experiment, turning the Opacity up a little bit more, now that we're kind of hiding it from some of those other areas, and, you know, that kind of shows you the different things you can do with it. All right guys, I hope you enjoyed this effect.  I know it was something a little bit different this week, but I really want to come back to a foundational thing that you could use over and over again, because, really, what I'm trying to do here on this PhotoshopCAFEchannel is not necessarily be like, you know, here's how to do all these elaborate things. What I want to do is give you practical things that you can use every day to make you better at Photoshop.  So whether you're a designer, or a photographer, or you're a hybrid, somewhere in the middle there, kind of a little bit more like me.  I'm a photographer and a designer. I want to give you the tools that you can use every single day that are practical, that can give your image just that little extra pizzazz. So, anyway, if you like this kind of tutorials, and you like what I've been doing here on the channel, hit the Subscribe button, because every week, I'm making a new tutorial andI've got some really great stuff coming up that I want to share with you.  Also, do me a favor.  Hit that Like button.  This is not just all about me talking to you.  I want to hear from you as well, so add a comment underneath there, and let's get some discussions going. Let's see, you know, what are your challenges? What are the things that excite you and inspire you? And what direction would you like to see this channel go in the future? So, anyway,guys, thanks for watching and until next time, I'll see you at the CAFE.