This week, I show you how to create what I’m calling a “talk show-style” curtain. In my defense, I admit that many talk shows do not have curtains, and many non-talk shows do have curtains. But this is the kind of curtain that Johnny Carson had, back when JC was king of late-night TV. You know, back when there was such a thing.

I employed this very effect for the background of my recent 3D Pie Chart movies. But the curtain exists entirely independently of its foreground. By way of proof, here’s the official description from lynda.com‘s Colleen Wheeler:

One of my favorite flavors of Deke’s Techniques are the projects that you can make yourself using nothing but Photoshop. This week, Deke shows you how to create a “talk show” curtain from pure pixels and a combination of Photoshop filters. This curtain may look familiar, having provided a visually textured background for the 3D pie chart that Deke made during last week’s Techniques episode. This week, Deke shows how he made it, starting with a completely new document, applying the Fibers filter, adding a little bit of Motion Blur, and then heaping on some layer effects. The result is a set of gently parted curtains that can serve as a background for your own artwork.

In fact, with a few adjustments, I made my own set of graphical curtains using Deke’s technique—minus the gradient layer mask—with a few color and gradient changes as well as the addition of a drop shadow.

Each week, in just about ten minutes, Deke shares a new technique designed to get you thinking about how to work in Photoshop or Illustrator. Subscribers to the lynda.com Online Training Library (OTL) can view the whole collection here, including several exclusive members-only techniques. What might you do with this week’s curtain of pixels? What sorts of things would you like to see Deke do with Photoshop or Illustrator in the future? Tell us, please do.

Meanwhile, a couple of notes: Very soon (perhaps next week), we’ll be making all sample files available to Premium Members of the lynda.com OTL so that you can follow along. At which point, we will necessarily have to renumber the videos to include both the free and members-only movies. For example, today’s episode is actually 33 in the grand scheme of things. Should this new numbering scheme go into effect any time soon, I will of course keep you apprised.