Typesetting Tips

Photoshop Tutorial - Digital Reproduction of Foil

There will come a time when you need to show how foil
can enhance a design, but you don’t want to go through
the process of producing a die and then foil stamping the
sample or mock-up. However, you can avoid these steps
by reproducing a foil effect in Photoshop that may sell
your design without the cost and time involved to produce
an actual stamped sample:

1) Select the area that will have the foil effect. Create a
new layer and title it “Foil”.

2) Select a gradient from the pre-set gradients list. The
Copper pre-set is a good one to start out with. Choose
either the Linear or the Reflected gradient effect and set
the mode to Difference.

3) Fill the selection with the gradient. Now fill it again
utilizing a different angle. Repeat a few times, starting at
different locations and using different angles to fill it. The
end result should be an area that has random-looking
highlights and shadows. If the highlights/shadows have too
much contrast, use Gaussian Blur to smooth out the area
(locking the transparency on the layer will help keep the
edges of the selection sharp). Use the Curves command
or the Levels command to bring out the mid-tone areas a
little more, since this is where the color will show up the
most.

4) Use Hue/Saturation to adjust the color of the foil effect.
Select Colorize in the dialog box to get a uniform color.
Increase the Saturation amount to make the color more
intense.

Experiment
This tutorial is just to get you started. Try applying a
Bevel/Emboss Layer Style effect with a very high softening
amount and a low Shadow Mode percentage to give the
area a slight embossed effect. Use a very small Drop
Shadow (set the light source to the lower left or right) to
give the effect of the die leaving a slight impression in the
paper. For a holographic look, use the Rainbow gradient
pre-set and change the mode to color as your last
gradient fill, and don’t Colorize during your Hue/Saturation
adjustments. The most helpful tip, though, is to have some
foil sample books from foil manufacturers on hand; first, so
that you can match your colors to what’s available and
second, so you can see if the effect you’ve created on-
screen is a close match to the foil you see in real life.