Creating the Mortar

The next few steps will let us give even more depth to our mortar. Our aim here is to cut out the shape of our lettering so that it is placed correctly on the background of our pages.

1. Duplicate the Text layer and call the new layer Text Copy, then place this new layer above the Mortar layer.
   
   
2. Select Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and apply a Radius of 3 pixels.
   
   
We are going to use this temporary layer to extract a selection.


3. Select Image > Adjust > Levels and set the following Input Levels: 43, 1.00, 192.
   
   
This levels setting helps to define the black and white areas and to eliminate any excess grey pixels. As a result, you will obtain a clean selection in the following step.


4. Choose Select > Color Range, set Fuzziness to 72, then click on the preview on any point outside the lettering.
   
   
This step lets you instantly select all the white pixels on the Text Copy layer.



Figure 4: The Color Range is a very useful tool.


5. Delete the Text Copy layer.
   
   
You should have an active selection frame on the Mortar layer at this stage.


6. Select Edit > Clear and deselect the selection.
   
   


Figure 5: The Mortar layer is finished.

And there you have it, your Mortar layer is finished. Now we can move on to creating the bricks.