Recreate Aquafina Ads

You may have noticed the new Aquafina© ad spots, but if not, go here www.aquafina.com to see what we’re doing here.

First step is going to be to open a new file [File > New] setting the dimensions small (this determines how many “light rays” you’re going to have). Make sure the width is twice the height and set the Background to Transparent.

Use the Marquee Select Tool [M] and fill half of your image with whatever color you want your rays to be.

Press [Ctrl + A] to select all, then go under [Edit > Define Pattern]. Rename the pattern to something you’re going to remember. Create another new file [Ctrl + N] and make it nearly twice the size of what you want your final image to be; ie. if I want a 500×400 image in the end, I’m going to make this new file 800×700. Create a new Layer and go under [Edit > Fill]. Select Use:Pattern and select your new Pattern from the Custom Pattern dropdown. You should get a bunch of vertical lines like this:

Now go under [Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates]. Select Rectangular to Polar and press OK. Now, use the Crop Tool [C] and crop from the top-right corner to a little past your center.

You may want to apply a small Gaussian Blur to get rid of some the jagged edges [Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur]. I used a Radius of 0.6.

Create a New Layer underneath your “light ray” layer. Select the Gradient Tool [G] and set the foreground color to white, background to the color of your “light ray” pattern. In your Options Bar, set the Gradient Mode to [Radial]. Click and drag from the center of your pattern out.

You now have your background. The next step is going to be creating the text. I suggest using a thick bold font. Select the Type Tool [T] and click-and-drag a box with the approximate size of the text you want. Enter your text. Open the Paragraph Palette and [Window > Paragraph] and select the [Justify All] button.

Now, the trick here is in the text formatting. Open up your Character Palette [Window > Character] and select the text in the middle. You’re going to adjust the Leading and the Vertical Scale. You want to make it slightly taller than the text above it and close up the spacing.

Adjust the bottom text in the same fashion, making it taller than the text above it. With the Type Tool, select your text and adjust the bounding box to fit perfectly around your text. You may have to adjust the Tracking in your Character palette to lessen the room between characters.

Rasterize your Type Layer by going [Layer > Rasterize > Type]. Press [Ctrl + T] to bring up the Free Transform. Use the adjustment points to transform your type layer to something like this:

Now, find the center of your image. You can do this by selecting the background layer, pressing [Ctrl + A] to Select All, and dragging some guides towards the center. When they find the center, they should snap-to. Drag your text layer to the center of your image. Create a new layer underneath and fill it with white.

Hold [Ctrl] and click on the text layer, making sure you have the new white layer selected. Fill your selection with black. You might see a little black outline like this:

Now we’re going to go under [Filter > Blur > Radial Blur]. Set the Blur Method to zoom, Quality to Best, and Amount to somewhere between 60 and 80. Press OK.

Bring up the Levels dialog box by pressing [Ctrl + L]. Drag 2 of the 3 sliders towards the right slider. You should see your blur become solid.

Press OK. Go [Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur] and adjust it until the edges aren’t jagged. Bring up the Levels again [Ctrl + L] and adjust the sliders towards each other until the edges sharpen.

Press [Ctrl + T] to bring up the Free Transform. Scale the layer down until the outside edges are slightly hidden by the text above.

Set the Layer Mode to [Multiply] and the white should disappear. Link the text layer and the shadow layer, and drag them to cover the center of your background.

The final steps are to create a new layer above your text layer, and press [Ctrl + G]. Select the Gradient Tool [G] and a light foreground color with a white background color. Drag the Gradient across your new layer until you get the effect you want.

It’s not EXACTLY like the Aquafina© ad, but they probably cheated and used a 3-D program.

Aquafina© is copyrighted by PepsiCo, Inc.