All right, here is part 1 of article #2 in a series about digital image editing: Making the most of the text tool in Photoshop. As I said before, I write these articles using Photoshop as an example, but the same techniques can easily be used in Paint Shop Pro. For the sake of sanity I’m not going to tell you how to do a dozen different types of text, I’ll provide links for that. Rather, in this article I’ll go over some different tools and tricks that are used in making dazzling text effects
“Button, button, who’s got the button?” So, you’ve no doubt noticed by now that there are a lot of buttons in Photoshop. Today, you’ll figure out what at least 5 of those buttons are!
Look at the image below. On the left you’ll see the toolbar with one button expanded. This is the type tool. For now all you want is the horizontal type tool, but if you like vertical text, go for it. Along the top of the image is the text toolbar. Here you can change some basic settings such as font, font size, font color and paragraph arrangement. On the right side you see two very important buttons – Warp Text, which allows you to distort your text in any way imaginable. The other is Spacing Settings with which you can alter the spacing between letters, increase or decrease the vertical and horizontal size of the text, set lead distance, create italics, bold face, text with a line through it, and so on. In this menu, you also have more options for paragraph arrangement.
Now, before I go too much farther I must address the issue of fonts. Face it, Times New Roman is extremely boring! In today’s world of flashy graphics and people with too much time on their hands (i.e. me
), we need fonts with a bit more pizzazz. Thankfully, there are literally thousands upon thousands of free fonts on the internet available for download. Here’s a few sites to get you started:http://www.dafont.com/en/
http://www.spoonloads.com/
http://www.1001freefonts.com/
Once you’ve downloaded some fonts you’ll need to install them. This is actually very easy. I like to keep my downloaded fonts in their own place so I can keep track of them; my fonts are kept in a folder called ‘Downloaded Fonts’. To install them, simply copy the files (more edit – copy) and find the folder Windows keeps it’s fonts in. (that is usually something like C:/Windows/Fonts) Once you have the right folder simply paste the copied files (edit – paste). If for some reason the fonts don’t show up in the list, restart your computer. That fixes the problem for me!
Now, since the menu boxes for the Warp Text and Spacing Settings are pretty self-explanatory, I’ll let you figure those out on your own. Just re-size and warp the text as needed.
Now, lets’ get to the cool stuff!
First off, I’ll show you how to do the glow-ey text as seen in my YodaMan sig seen above.
In order to start, create a new document, at least 400 by 400 pixels, with a background color of black. Next, use the text tool and make some white text. You can rename this layer by double-clicking on it. Do that and rename it ‘white’. Here is where we get to use new buttons.
Now, your layers palate should show two layers: the background, and the text layer (which was renamed ‘white’). right click on the text layer and click ‘rasterize layer’. When text is added in Photoshop, the layer is kept as a text layer which allows you to go back and edit the text like any word processing program. As a result of that, you are unable to edit the actual pixels that make up the lettering. What ‘rasterize layer’ means is that the layer format is changed, allowing you to edit the pixels.
With the newly rasterized layer, right-click on it again and select ‘duplicate layer’. Viola, a copy of your layer! Name this layer ‘glow’. It’s time to decide what color the glow will be, pick anything you want. Fill in all the letters with your new color, and then duplicate the colored text layer twice.
Now, you should have 5 layers in you layer palate. ‘Background’, ‘white’, ‘glow’, ‘glow copy’ and ‘glow copy 2’. Here is where we are introduced to the huge ‘filter’ menu. Make sure you’ve got layer ‘glow’ selected and drag your mouse cursor to the top of the screen and select ‘filter’ – ‘blur’ – ‘gaussian blur’
For the first layer, choose a gaussian blur with a radius of 20. For layer ‘glow copy’ choose a radius of 10. For layer ‘glow copy 2’ choose a radius of 5. Now you’ve got some glowing… stuff! Congrats!
But wait, now you’ve got this glowing… stuff covering up your white text layer! That’s simple enough to fix, just select the ‘white’ layer and drag it to the top of the layers menu. now you’re done!
You can make a bigger or smaller glow by adjusting the radius of the gaussian blur. If you want a more intense glow, simply duplicate the middle and outer glow layers (after you have blurred them) and the glow intensity will build up.
Like anything else in Photoshop, this simple technique can be applied to any number of things. Use the glow on straight white lines to make lightsaber blades. Or use it on a line drawing to make ‘futuristic’ looking blueprints. Make a jagged line and use the same technique to create lightning, as seen in my image below. Your imagination is the limit!
Still to come - The Basics of Digital Imagery - Text Part II
In the next installment I’ll show you how to insert pictures into text letters; What the heck a gradient is and how it makes text look cool; And something so cool and secret, I don’t even know what it is yet. Stay tuned!
YM
PS - For those of you wondering, yes I will reformat these articles and submit them as a fature article in the next week. Changes will be made and things will be added. Stay tuned!
