Let's begin by creating a new PhotoShop document and name it 'blood'. Just to be sure you end up with the same results, try to follow the steps as closely as possible. This technique will require a little different tweaking depending on what font you use, what resolution your document is, whether the final output is for screen or print, etc.. You may have to experiment a bit. I started with a 8x5 inch, 72dpi, RGB Color document on a white background.
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To give the type a bit of a liquid look, you will need the help of three filters, Wind, Spatter (of course) and Stamp.
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| Step Three Select Filter>Brush Strokes>Spatter (Spray Radius: 15; Smoothness: 10). Your text should now look something like the one shown at the top right. |
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| Before using the Stamp Filter, you need to make sure that black as the
foreground color and white is the background color. The Stamp Filter
will apply these colors for it's effect. Now that the colors are set, you are ready to run the Stamp filter. Choose Filter>Sketch>Stamp (Light/Dark Balance: 25; Smoothness: 15). You should now have an image that looks like the one shown bottom right. |
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| Step Five Now comes the fun part. This is where you actually get to have some creative input into your final artwork rather than relying on filters to do it for you. First, invert your image again by choosing Image>Adjust>Invert or use the shortcut key Ctrl/Command - I. Next, slop up the letters a bit by adding some drips and drops here and there. You don't have to be too neat with this, just use the Paint Brush Tool with a hard, round brush and have some fun. Mine is shown at right. |
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After filling the background with white, you need to create a new layer. Do this by clicking on the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette. Name it "blood"
Choose a darker red color in the picker and then fill using the same method as above. Remove the selection with the shortcut key (Ctrl/Command - D) or by choosing Select>Deselect from the select menu |
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| For the last part of this step you will need to blur the image a little using Filter>Blur>Guassian Blur (Radius: 4.0). You are going to be using the Plastic Wrap Filter next to create the specular highlights. Blurring the image will create an expanded color range for the filter to wrap itself to. Your image should now look like the one shown bottom right. | ![]() |
| Step Eight Now for some real magic. Choose Filter>Artistic>Plastic Wrap (Highlight Strength: 15; Detail: 8; Smoothness: 8) and click OK to create some very cool specular highlights. The Plastic Wrap Filter is great for creating all sorts of irregular highlights like those found in liquids, gels, plastic, slimy substances, etc.. Your image should look like the one shown at right. |
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| Now we need to remove the background from the 'blood' layer. Load the blue copy selection again and hit "delete" | ![]() |
The blood letters look best on a dark background. I created mine by filling the background layer with gray (RGB values 128,128,128). I then added Noise, Filter>Noise>Add Noise (Amount:15; Distribution: Guassian; Monochromatic) and finished it off with some Lighting Effects, Filter>Render>Lighting Effects (Light Type: Omni; Gloss: -100/Matte; Material: -100/Plastic; Exposure: 0; Ambience: 8; Texture Channel: None). The Lighting Effects Dialog settings are shown top right. |
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