Comments on: Embroidered Text in Photoshop

By: Ayaz

Ayaz — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 02:45:27 +0000

Hello,

I am not sure what I am doing wrong, I don’t see any thread lines, all I see is shading applied to the layer in the back.

Any Suggestions?

Thanks,
Ayaz

By: Jesse

Jesse — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:59:59 +0000

Very nice effect, easy to figure out and a Double A-rating for the layout. The next round is on me when you’re in New York.

Jesse Parris
Art Director
Compendium Publishing
346 North Main Street
Port Chester, NY 10573

jesse@beautyhandbook.com

By: Victoria

Victoria — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 17:21:15 +0000

Hmmmmm. It’s hard to know without seeing your setup, but here are a couple things you could try…

– Hit ctrl+H(command+H) to see if you’ve accidentally hidden your outlines.
– Make sure you have the path active and have selected a blank layer in the layers palette before right-clicking.

Let me know if you’re still stuck and I’ll try to figure out what’s going on.

By: Massimo

Massimo — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 16:09:06 +0000

Hello, could someone please give a hint on why my “stroke path” item in the right-click menu is disabled? I have done everything up to that point, but it doesn’t come up with either the pen tool or the freeform pen tool. When I create a work path from the type layer I also don’t get any feedback, other than it appearing in the history and the text looking slighty more antialiased. What am I doing wrong? Thanks

By: Victoria

Victoria — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:16:35 +0000

The brush and style should work fine with other fonts, as long as they’re a thin weight.

Can you post a sample of what your work looks like? I can be more helpful if I can see what you’re getting, but here are some possible fixes:

If it’s the shape of the brushstroke that seems wrong, and it just isn’t “fuzzy” looking:
- Make sure you’re not actually hiding a selection that’s cropping off the edges of the stroke. (I keep doing that by accident myself!)
- Try increasing the scatter slider in the brush settings if the stitches are too close together, or playing with the brush size if you’re using bigger or smaller type.
- If the font is too thick, you can select its outlines, then contract the selection a few pixels. You can also experiment with stroking single paths you draw yourself.

If the layer style’s the problem and it’s adding the wrong sort of texture, you can right click on the layer style icon and choose “Scale Effects…” to adjusting the scale of the layer style if it is the wrong size for your stitches.

If the color change seems to be the problem, try doing it the same color as the tutorial then adding a hue/saturation adjustment layer on top to change it to the color you want.

Hope something there was useful!

By: Dhruvin

Dhruvin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:08:56 +0000

I got the files and they work just fine. Thank you, but when I try to create embroidered text I can not get it to be fuzzy. I followed all your steps perfectly except I used red instead of pink and used another font instead of Nobel Light because I don’t have it.

By: Victoria

Victoria — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:02:09 +0000

Dhruvin, they’re each 4kb files — the usual much larger files you’re talking about contain sets of multiple brushes, often with complex shapes. This is just one fairly basic brush and a single layer style. I’ve added a link to grab both as a zip file, however — let me know if that works.

By: Dhruvin

Dhruvin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 01:45:33 +0000

Hey I cannot download the files either. When I download them I get 1 kb files. I don’t think this is the real files because usually brushes are 7mbs and I can’t open it with Photoshop. I downloaded via save target as.. and clicked on it. Can you please send it to my email? Thank you and Great Tutorial

By: Darius

Darius — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 00:05:10 +0000

I guess I am looking for the same effect, but as a fill not a stroke if that is possible…

By: Victoria

Victoria — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 23:53:28 +0000

Hmmm.. that’s a good question! Large embroidered areas are usually made out of stripes of smaller stitches, so you could actually try running the effect on a bunch of vector lines, then masking that to fit the area (and maybe using the effect on the outside edges as well?

You could also try using the effect on the edges, then filling the middle with a texture taken from a photo of embroidery (something like the shield areas on this?) and matching the color.

It’s also possible to use the brush as a paintbrush and vary the size as you go — if you have a graphics tablet, setting the scale to be based on pen pressure will allow you to draw stitches of varying length.

Hope some of that is helpful!