"warped" wrote in message
I have a client who has drawn an linear image (basically two rules with circles in between the lines). The client wants to turn this linear image (8"x.25") into a circular shape to be used as a border on a die cut circle printed piece.
Anybody know if Photoshop has a filter which will allow me to easily make this thing into a circle shape?
This would probably be easier using a vector program such as Illustrator, but I’m a Photoshop guy, so here goes. It can be done, using a "warp" function called Rectangular to Polar coordinates.
Start by deciding how many times you want the frieze to repeat along the outside of the circle, and the relative thickness of the frieze, as a percentage of the radius. For this example we’ll to do 20 reps of the pattern, with the frieze occupying 5 percent of the radius.
1) Make a high resolution – at least double the final resolution – copy of the frieze pattern.
2) Crop if necessary so that the ends of the pattern match up. If the pattern is vertical, rotate the image 90 degrees..
3) Select All, and define a pattern with Edit>Define Pattern
4) Copy the pattern, and create a new document
5) Right click on the upper border of the new window (ctrl Click on Mac), and select Canvas size. Enter 2000 percent for the horizontal size. This will create 20 repetitions of the pattern around the edge Click OK.
6) Fill the resulting image with the pattern. This is the frieze that will
run along the outsize edge of the image.
7) Use Canvas size again, this time with a value of 2000 percent for the vertical size. Click the bottom center square of the layout, to place your frieze along the bottom of the image, and click OK. At this point, you’ll have a large image with the frieze pattern along the bottom edge.
8) Make the image square by either resizing it to a square shape with
Image>Image Size.., or add or subtract white from the top margin.
9) Run Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates and specify rectangular to polar.
Voila, your pattern is now bent into a circle. If the resolution is too low you will get a blurred image. It may be possible to clean this up with Levels or Unsharp Mask, otherwise try again, starting with a higher rez image.
Since the pattern is relatively simple, you may be able to attack this problem using Photoshop’s text along a path feature. If you can represent the circles as O’s, then two lines of underlined text could be wrapped around a circular path to create your pattern directly. Other than no jaggies or blur, the advantage of using a font is that you could adjust the attributes of the font after the fact to get the result you want. —
Mike Russell – www.curvemeister.com
