Playing with Contours in Photoshop

Several of the layer effects have various options for contours. Contours change the distribution of the colors in the effect. The default setting for all the effects, except satin, is linear contour. In an effect with a linear contour, the opacity drops off in a straight line. But you’re not limited to the linear contour option. Click the arrow of the Contour option, and you’ll find a variety of preset contours. Click the palette arrow, and you can load yet another contour preset library.

The presets offer contours like ring, rolling, sawtooth, and steps, all of which create rings of transparency within the shadows and glows. If you use contours with bevel and emboss effects, you can create nooks, crannies, bumps, and lumps that are highlighted and shaded. You can also find options for naming and deleting contours as well as saving, loading, resetting, and replacing contour libraries. Choosing different contours can create fun and funky shadows and glow. These are the effects from top to bottom:
- Drop Shadow with Linear contour
- Drop Shadow with Ring-Triple contour, 25% Noise
- Drop Shadow with Gaussian Inverse contour
- Drop Shadow with Valley-High

Adjusting contour settings
Of course, you’re using Photoshop, the Swiss Army Knife of the graphics-editing world, so you can do a whole lot more than choose a preset contour and apply it to a layer. Depending on the effect you’re working with, you can change the appearance of the contour in a variety of ways:
- Noise: Randomizes the colors of selected pixels in the drop shadow to give a gritty effect.
- Anti-aliasing: Slightly softens the edge pixels of a contour.
- Range: Controls how much of the glow is targeted for the contour. Reduce the Range setting to get a less feathered, tighter, and larger glow.
- Jitter: Doesn’t affect the appearance of the default glow, but with other gradients, the Jitter setting varies the color and opacity of selected pixels to give a roughened effect.
- Invert: Turns the colors of the satin effect inside out.
- Gloss Contour: Changes the distribution of color in the effect over the layer. It creates a metallic effect when used with the Bevel and Emboss styles. The indented Contour option, which appears below the Bevel and Emboss style in the Styles list, does the same for the edges of the layer. It creates shaded and highlighted nooks and crannies when used with the Bevel and Emboss styles.

Modifying contours with the Contour Editor
If the preset contours just don’t do it for you, feel free to create your own by using the Contour Editor dialog box, accessed by clicking the Contour thumbnail. Click the line on the mapping line to add points and drag the line to adjust the slope. You can also select a point on the mapping line and enter values for Input and Output. To create a sharp corner instead of a curve, select a point and click Corner. When you have the contour to your liking, click the New button, give it a name and click OK. Photoshop saves your custom contour as a preset and makes it available on the Contour palette. You can save custom contours for reloading later or for trading with friends and neighbors. (Try giving them away on Halloween.) Photoshop saves contours as a .shc file in the Contours folder in the Presets folder in the Photoshop application folder.