Chapter 11

How to Do the Most Popular Special Effects

And Making Stuff Look Cool

If there’s one thing that Photoshop is well-known for, it’s for creating special effects. Well, it’s known for that, and for processing images taken with your camera, and for creating art and illustrations, and for web graphics, and for designing billboards and brochures, and stuff like that. But, sure, special effects, too. Let’s go with that. Okay, well here’s the thing: lots of programs (like Lightroom, for example) can do basic, even some advanced, image editing, but the mack daddy of special effects is definitely Photoshop. If you want flaming text, where else would you go? That’s right—it’s a P-thing. See what I did there? Just now. That’s right, I just coined a cool new phrase—“P-thing”. (Slang for “Photoshop Thing”.) Now, all I have to do is use it a whole bunch of times on Snapchat or Wishbone or some other app disaffected teens use, and then it will “go viral.” Everybody will be using it, and once you hear Beyoncé say it, then it becomes official. Maybe she could look at someone’s photo on Instagram, maybe a Kardashian or two, and she could be all catty and reshare their photo with a caption saying, “That’s a P-thing,” implying that the image was highly retouched in Photoshop. See, this is exactly how things go viral. You’re getting the inside track on all this, which is the subject of my next book (well, it is now) on how to make up your own slang words, and then make them go viral. Chapter 1 will be: “Get Beyoncé to Say It.” Chapter 2 will be: “Get Taylor Swift to Use It in a Song Lyric.” Chapter 3 could be: “Making Sure It’s Not Already in the Urban Dictionary Meaning Something Startlingly Naughty, of Which There Is a 73% Chance That It Is There, and It Means Something Like That. Or Worse.”