How to Wrap a Flag Around a World Cup Trophy
2010
In the eve of the World Cup taking place in South Africa, I thought I’ll serve up a tutorial celebrating the football fiesta.
In this tutorial, we’ll be be wrapping a flag around the World cup trophy by using the clipping Mask command and changing the Blend modes of the layers we’ll be creating. In the final image, we’ll sort of make light work of the official World Cup logo.
Step 1
We’ll start with an ‘ordinary’ World Cup trophy that can be found easily on the internet. Use any Selection Tool of your choice (E.g. Magnetic Lasso or Magic Wand Tools) to remove the trophy from its background.
Step 2
A closer look at the trophy, you find a thin white line left from the background. With the Eraser Tool (E), at a reduced opacity of 40%, cautiously fade the edges of the trophy.
The result is a trophy with soft edges.
Step 3
Press Ctrl+N for a new document with a white background and set the document size to 1280 by 950 pixels and a resolution of 140 dpi. Drag your trophy into this new document and name the new layer ‘cup 1′. This step could be skipped if you’ve decided to stick to the current document you started off with.
Step 4
Hit Shift+Ctrl+U to desaturate the trophy.
Step 5
To brighten the trophy just a bit, hit Ctrl+L for the Levels Dialog box and then enter the parameters for the Input Levels as shown below. Duplicate the ‘cup 1′ twice name the layers ‘cup 2′ and ‘cup copy’ respectively. (*Note: the ‘cup copy’ layer should be placed below the other cup layers).
Step 6
You can download this South Africa flag for free from www.sxc.hu. I chose this flag because the lines of the flag weren’t too straight and the flag’s texture looked glossy. These conditions I find ‘near perfect’. Right-click to duplicate the flag and named it ‘flag2′. We’ll be using the it later.
Step 7
For the sake of illustration, I reduced the opacity of the flag to show the position of the ‘cup’ behind it. Anyway, Press Ctrl+T for the Free Transform Tool and rotate the flag as shown below. Also right-click to
select the Distort Tool to narrow the selection a little more to accommodate white strips of the flag.
Step 8
Still in Free Transform Mode, right-click the selection and select the Warp Tool and make the subtle distortions as shown below:
Step 9
With the ‘flag’ layer selected, right-click and choose Layer Clipping Mask for the result below:
Step 10
Set the Blend mode of the flag to Multiply and merge the two layers by pressing Ctrl+E.
Step 11
For the ‘flag 2′ layer, add a Layer Clipping Mask to the ‘cup 2′ layer and set its Blend mode to Overlay.
Step 12
Pressing Ctrl+E, merge the ‘flag 2′ and ‘cup2′ layers and set its Blend mode to Lighten. I did this to bring out reflections (white areas) of the trophy.
Step 13
To adjust the tone of the trophy, press Ctrl+M for the Curves Dialog box.
The final result shows the colours of the flag been realistically smeared all over the trophy.
Step 14
To make the image’s detail stand out a little, go to Filter>Sharpen>Sharpen and hit Ctrl+F to Sharpen again. Since the Sharpen effect happens on a ‘level by level’ basis, this does not allow for a steady progression for applying the effect. So in this case, we’ll have to fade the Sharpen effect by going to Edit>Fade to reduce the Sharpening other the image would look grainy somewhat.
The result:
Step 15
You’ll notice that the two rings at the base of the trophy has spots of colour on it. Use the Eraser Tool that’s set to a Soft Round Brush and Hardness increased to 50%. Erase the faint colours on two rings at the base of the trophy of both ‘cup 1′ and ‘cup 2′ respectively to reveal the ‘cup copy’ base (that is, the third cup).
Step 16
To give the trophy more solidity, double-click the ‘cup 2′ layer to bring up the Layer Style. Choose Bevel and Emboss and set the parameters below:
Step 17
Also select an Inner Glow Layer style and make the adjustments below:
The result:
Step 18
Create a new layer (the top layer in the Layers Palette) and with a white Soft Round brush highlight the edges of the cup and change the Blend mode to Softlight.
The result:
Step 19
To complete the image, I added two Layers with one having a Radial Gradient Fill and the other a Linear Gradient.
Step 20
An ellipse shape filled will black was blurred with a Gaussian Blur (Blur Radius: 2.5%).
The base of the cup was copied using the Marquee Tool (M) to a new layer. Then it was rotated using the Free Transform Tool, Flipped Horizontally, blurred just slightly and faded by reducing its opacity to about 50%.
Step 21
I threw into the mix the official World Cup logo and duplicated it twice.
Step 22
I desaturated the top logo and erased some details using a Layer Mask and the second logo was placed behind the Radial Gradient fill for the final image. The idea was having most of the colours of the World Cup logo appear to have been sapped by the trophy itself.
Even though I’m not a South African, all I can is go Bafana! Bafana! And blow your way through the tournament like a Vuvuzela! Some people might not take kindly to this, you know.
