Good way to build a grid in Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign?

[laarree]

M A V I C wrote:

laarree, I'm impressed you did that in Illustrator so quickly. How did you do that?

For the piece I need to do, I am only using one image. So it needs to be warped the same as the lines...

I created a black rectangle, cloned and duped several times horizontally, cloned and duped this row of rectangles vertically several times, grouped all those suckers and applied Object/Envelope Distort/Make with Warp.

From Warp Options dialog box, I chose "Bulge"/Horizontal with a bend of c. 20%.

If you want to warp similarly in Photoshop, you can turn your image into smart object, the choose Edit/Transform/Warp, and manipulate the mesh. Your image and the mesh warp will remain editable ad infinitum because you are working with a smart object.

[Mike Johnson]

I'd probably just record an action in Photoshop.

[laarree]

Mike Johnson wrote:
I'd probably just record an action in Photoshop.

That too, so the same distortion can be applied to any image or batch of images.

and Seacrest:



:-)

[M A V I C]

Thanks guys, I think I've got it. A couple things to clear up:

- I realize I wasn't incredibly specific in my first post (eg number of images I'm using.) This is mainly because I wanted feedback on different ways to accomplish this for my future reference as well. It seems like I want to design more things that would use similar techniques so I was trying to find the best ways to do it.

- As I noted above, I could have probably figured out how to do this on my own but I wanted more ideas on how to do it. So some of you gave ideas on how to do it with multiple images, or single... or different ways altogether... that's what I wanted to hear. In a mockup I did I only used four and now the client prefers that over the 16 they were going for.

Thanks again.

[M A V I C]

laarree wrote:
If you want to warp similarly in Photoshop, you can turn your image into smart object, the choose Edit/Transform/Warp, and manipulate the mesh. Your image and the mesh warp will remain editable ad infinitum because you are working with a smart object.

I'm using CS4 and just noticed you can't warp a smart object.

[mikebw]

Maybe dumb it down a little?

[laarree]

M A V I C wrote:
[quote=laarree]
If you want to warp similarly in Photoshop, you can turn your image into smart object, the choose Edit/Transform/Warp, and manipulate the mesh. Your image and the mesh warp will remain editable ad infinitum because you are working with a smart object.

I'm using CS4 and just noticed you can't warp a smart object.
I can, even in CS3, which is what I'm using here at work. Is the feature grayed out when you have a smart object layer selected?

[M A V I C]

laarree wrote:
[quote=M A V I C]
[quote=laarree]
If you want to warp similarly in Photoshop, you can turn your image into smart object, the choose Edit/Transform/Warp, and manipulate the mesh. Your image and the mesh warp will remain editable ad infinitum because you are working with a smart object.

I'm using CS4 and just noticed you can't warp a smart object.
I can, even in CS3, which is what I'm using here at work. Is the feature grayed out when you have a smart object layer selected?
Ok, I never realized there was a difference between a vector smart object and a smart object. I was trying it with a vector smart object.

[trisho.]

If the Smart Object method doesn't work, you could do it the old fashioned way and keep them all grouped in a folder and then transform that folder.

[laarree]

I love smart objects in Photoshop, and love nesting them, applying smart filters, embedding RGB smart objects in CMYK psd files, etc. One of the reasons I love Lightroom 2 for processing my photos is that I can select a photo, open it as a smart object in Photoshop CS4, do my retouching and retain Camera Raw editability all the while. You could take a bunch of horizontal photos, open them as individual smart objects, plop them in a grid, select the batch and convert that to a smart object, then warp the whole freaking thing, retaining editability of the original non-distorted photos throughout the whole process.