Make Money, Part 2

The second part of my How-To article shows how to make money curl upward.

If you haven’t yet read the first part of my How-To on “making money”, go read it now because the techniques used here are pretty much the same. But while it took just a single hit of the Spherize filter and some erasing to make a five-dollar bill (see Figure 1) curl downward, an upward curl requires a more complex technique and the backside of the bill in order to look realistic.

CURL UPWARD

Figure 1: Our original image.

Step 1: Using Image –> Canvas Size, increase the canvas size by 150% both horizontally and vertically. Quick tip: Check the “Relative” checkbox when doing this to add the extra canvas size to the already-existing canvas size. Unchecking it will change the canvas size into exactly what you specify in the measurement fields.

At this point the five-dollar bill should be centered in a large document window with white space all around.

Step 2: If the fiver is not already on its own layer, make it so. If it’s part of the Background, double-click the Background in the Layers palette to make it a layer.

Step 3: Rotate the bill 90 degrees clockwise or counter-clockwise.

Step 4: Select Filter –> Distort –> Shear… to open the Shear filter dialog box (see Figure 2). Shear can’t in itself add a curl, but it can put a bend into an image which is very helpful for the front side of our bill, which will be partially obscured by the backside of the bill so all it needs is a bend. Turning the bill on its side allows us to put the bend along its vertical axis (Adobe, PLEASE allow the Shear filter to bend on both axes!). The settings you see in Figure 2 will create a realistic bend to the bill. Click OK to apply.

Figure 2: The Shear filter dialog box.

Step 5: Rotate the bill back to its original orientation (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: The front side, with shearing.

Now let’s move to the back side, which is going to whip around the front with a strong curl.

Steps 6–10: Repeat Steps 1–5 for the back of the bill, but in Step 9 shear the bill in the opposite direction you used in Step 4. This will effectively bend the back side of the bill in the opposite direction of the front side.

Step 11: Drag the bill to the top of the document window (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: Positioning the bill properly.

Step 12: Select Filter –> Distort –> Spherize… to bring up the Spherize filter dialog box. Select Amount of 100 and Normal mode and click OK to add a curl to the bill (see Figure 5).

Figure 5: The bill’s back side with the proper bend and curl.

Now we have the front side, with a simple bend, and the back side with a combination bend and curl courtesy of Shear and Spherize. The final steps involve stitching together these elements to create a realistic five-dollar bill with both front and back sides showing.

Step 13: Drag the back side from the one file into the other file with the front side. You should have two layers in your document.

Step 14: It’s important that one side is not larger than the other, so scale either one of the bill’s sides so they are proportional. I like to do this by positioning and scaling one side so its corners more or less match up with the other’s (see Figure 6).

Figure 6: By placing the corners next to each other, I ensure their proportions are correct.

Now the tricky part.

Step 15: Rotate and position the back side of the bill (which will obscure part of the front) so it looks realistic. Some things to consider:

• The amount of rotation you can realistically do depends on the amount of spherization and warping happening in the bill’s back side.
• The bottom points of the bill’s front and back sides must converge in order to be realistic; for example, if the front and back sides’ bottom edges converge in the center of the bill, the center of both the front and back sides must meet. In my case the two sides converge about 20% from their left edges.

My configuration is shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7: The two sides of the fiver are coming together.

Step 16: With the Pen tool, draw an path that defines the edge of the bill as it curls around. This can be hard to visualize, and it may take some practice to find the most realistic edge. The path should start at the top edge of the back side and end somewhere on the bottom edge of the front side. Once you are satisfied with your path, Command/Ctrl-click it in the Paths palette to make it a selection and then use the Eraser tool or masking techniques to hide the parts of the bill that shouldn’t be seen. Take a look at Figure 8, which shows the meshing of the front and back sides.

Figure 8: The two sides converge!

Step 17: Use various shading techniques (brushes, Dodge and Burn tools) to add shadow and depth to the final image (Figure 9).

Figure 9: The final image!

ONE FINAL BIT OF TRIVIA

I figured I’d get a laugh by titling my How-To, “How-To: Make Money”. Of course, there’s nothing counterfeit going on here. However, those who try to scan United States currency for this tutorial with Photoshop CS may be blocked by the application itself. Photoshop CS came with an anti-counterfeit system deep within it that monitored and aborted scans of currency—and displayed a terse warning to the “counterfeiter” in response. I don’t see Photoshop CS2 doing the same thing, so my guess is Adobe decided it wasn’t worth doing anymore—that, and there were several methods for getting around the system.