An Embossed Wordle
I was just messing around with Adobe Photoshop Elements and Wordle and came up with another what I would call cool effect.  Wordle, we know, creates spectacular visualizations of words based upon frequency within some text.  Working on a notion, I found a way to create an embossed effect to a wordle.  I’m really proud of it and so would like to share what I did with you.

I needed so text so I just went to my blog from yesterday and highlighted some text.  Then, it was off to Wordle.net to create one.  I used the Grilled Cheese font, horizontal layout, and then chose a brilliant colour combination.  Wordle calls this one yramirP.  (Figure it out)

A great Wordle in itself!

I captured the Wordle image and brought it into Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Next, select the entire Wordle, copy it, create a new document (Elements makes it the exact size), and paste the image.  I’ve now got two of them!

In the second one, from the Enhance Menu, select Adjust Color and then Remove Color.  (CTRL+SHIFT+U)  I then choose the background magic eraser tool and click in the black background area.  Elements chooses the black area in the background and deletes it.

Yes, there remains some black in the open areas but that really isn’t going to matter.  Because we’ve removed the black background, it’s now transparent.  Select the entire image and then copy it.

Head on over to the first image and paste it.

Make sure that the second image is on top of the first.  You may have to drag the layer upwards in the layers window.

And you’ve got it!  How’s this for an image to impress?

The result is a nice Wordle, really nice Wordle, with a very nice embossed effect.  You can then flatten the image by exporting it to a JPG or other image for use in your webpage or wiki.  The brilliant colours in that theme display very nicely giving the effect.

And, if you’ve had students do this, they’ve learned about Wordle, copying. pasting, combining two images, one image enhancement effect, layers, file types, backgrounds, and more.  Hopefully, they’ll now be inspired to work with the effects to see what other interesting things they can create.

Thanks, http://www.wordle.net