In this week’s free Deke’s Techniques episode, Deke takes a photo of his friend (lynda.com director Scott Erickson), isolates the portrait from its out-of-focus background, and applies an engraving effect that results in currency suitable for Scott to use to start his own country. He was thinking of calling it Scottland. 

Now, you may not need to produce your own "Scottish" currency, but you’ll find a stash of valuable tips in this week’s video that you can use for your own projects. Namely: 

Masking the in-focus part of an image with Photoshop CC’s new Select > Focus Area command. (You can see another example of how it works in Deke’s Photoshop 2014 Creative Cloud Updates course, right here.) For quick removal of the other elements in the photo, Select Focus Area works fairly well (and like any selection you can improve the results with Refine Mask).  In this example, we’re gonna apply an edge-tweaking effect anyway so we don’t need perfect results:

Adding a textural element to your composition. You can see how Deke approaches adding a texture (on top of the effect) and fine-tuning it with a Color Overlay style and Color blend mode. (By the way, you can find lots of textures in the same place Deke got this one, at Fotolia.com, where you can download 25 free images by signing up for a free trial subscription here.) 

Learn secret handshakes of the Layer Styles dialog box. During the course of the video, Deke reveals these two mysterious areas of the Layer Style dialog box and what they can do for you. 

Incorporate Deke’s Techniques of the Past! Finally, Deke adds this currency-like element to add legitimacy, which you may recall was created from scratch in Illustrator in Deke’s Techniques 168. 

And remember, if you want to go back and watch other Deke’s Techniques episodes, you can get a free week’s trail by signing up at lynda.com/deke to gain access to older and exclusive-er episodes.