Working with Adobe Stock in Project Felix

Often, I will browse Adobe Stock for visual inspiration when beginning a Project Felix composition. For this particular design, I’m on the hunt for a splash. Stock is pretty straight forward, just navigate to the 3D section and see what is available. I choose Model / Splash 08 but really any splash will do.

The first thing you need to do is drag the splash model into the scene and push it around a little. Rotate (R), Scale (S), and alter its position (V) along the x, y, and z axis. Once you have found a happy home, (really doesn’t matter at this point, most likely you will adjust later) open the color panel and adjust the base color however you see fit. Fortunately, for me the default material is what I wanted, so there is no need to modify.

At this point, I simply duplicate the splash. Using the Select Tool (V) and holding down alt, I drag the copied model to a new position. Rinse and repeat until you have something that feels right. Remember to change base colors (if you want), and I would suggest using the camera perspective tools, Orbit (1), Hand (2), and Zoom (3) to find the right angle, if needed.

This design is intended for a Churchill Design Studio social post. Churchill’s identity includes the use of two vertical rectangles – in this case interpreted by using two planes, adjusted in horizontal and vertical scale, and aligned along its x axis. Note the position of the planes relative to the splash models, it’s important that there is some interplay. The Object Properties panel helps me to keep things aligned and resize models consistently.

Again, Adobe Stock is super easy and I need a gradient background to add to this composition. Download or sync to a library, and add the gradient asset as the background of the scene. Just click the background layer in the scene panel (upper right), and in the Background Properties panel below, there is a link to select a file. In this case we are going to select crop to fit, but it’s worth playing around with other settings – ie. create light from background, which isn’t necessary here.

Render! Select the Render tab next to the design tab in the upper left. I rendered out at High psd, which takes a while, but it was worth it in the end. I needed a break anyway.

After opening the psd, I place the Churchill Design Studio logo, add hashtags and some text layers. For the Churchill vertical type, I’ve assigned an exclusion blend mode and masked it to the rendered shape. Lastly I added A few other simple Adobe Photoshop adjustments that you can see in the screenshot, aaaaand done.