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Welcome!
In these tutorials I'm going to show how to make some simple yet cool title graphics. Since I am using Photoshop 5 these tutorials will be customized to that program. However, I do think you can find them useful even with earlier versions of Photoshop as well as with PaintShop Pro.
I am aware of the fact that the layer effects option is not available in prior versions of Photoshop (it came with version 5) so you will have to improvise to get the same effects. It should be possible, I just don't know how it is done.
Let's make a title!
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Creating the text |
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This first title is really very simple. Unfortunately it also look it :) So just let's consider it a warm up. Open a new work space. For this I've chosen to make it 450x150 pixels. It is always a good idea to make it a bit bigger than the picture you want to create since that gives you some room to manœuvre.
Next step is to create the text we are going to work with. Choose text the text tool (looks like a capital T) and click in the work space were you want the text to be. This is not really important since you can easily move the text around at any time.
For this title I've chosen the font Rogers and set it to 45 pts in size and chosen a blue colour tone. When you have typed in the text you can move it around if you want. You can also specify things like base line, character spacing, auto kerning and anti-aliasing. Below is a short description of these options.
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Base line |
You can set
the base line for the whole text or just single character. |
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Character spacing |
This option
enables you to make the space between characters to |
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Auto kerning |
Checking this
box makes the text automatically kerned. However, |
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Anti-aliasing |
Invaluable
option! :) Makes the text look smooth and without any jags. When
using small font sizes you may have to uncheck this |
When you have typed in the text (if you don't have the Rogers font you can choose another) and clicked OK you will see a picture looking something like this:
Not very cool but we are going to make it look better.
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Using layer effects |
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With the text layer selected right click on it and choose Effects from the pop up menu. A small dialog box appears on the screen. From the top drop down box you can choose which types of effects to use. Below are settings for the effects and an option to choose colour. I won't go into what the different values are set to, only the ones I use. So if I don't mention a setting (value) I simply haven't used it.
Note: In order to apply any effects you must first check the box labeled Use
The first effect you will se is Shadow. This is a useful effect since it gives the text some depth. For this example I've chosen a gray shadow and set the spacing to 3 pixels. Now the image looks like this:
The next effect we are going to use is Inner glow. Choose it from the drop down list. As you can see there is almost the same options to choose from here except for the two radio buttons down below. Center simply means that the effect will be applied to the center part of the image, and Edge that it will be applied to the edges. Click in the Center radio button and then choose Difference from the drop down list above (next to the colour rectangle). Now the image will look like this:
Not too bad, huh? Still, we are not quite satisfied yet. After all, we haven't used the perhaps most interesting effect yet. Go to the drop down list and this time choose Bevels and emboss. This dialog box looks quite different. It is bigger and have more options. As you can see there is two drop down lists for choosing styles: One for highlight and one for shadow.
Below these are a drop down menu for choosing beveling and emboss. Click on it and choose Inner bevel. Then go the Highlight style menu and set it to Colour shading. Next go the Shadow style menu and set it to Soft light. And finally go down to the bottom box labeled Blur. This isn't a drop down menu. A click on the arrow button opens a slider (this is the same for all the small drop down look-alike boxes). Adjust the slider until the amount of blur is 10 pixels. Then our image looks like this:
Maybe not too much a difference but we will settle for this for now. Like I said earlier this is just a warm up :) Of course, you can choose different settings if you like. Feel free to experiment! And remember that everything you do (practically) can be undone simply by selecting it in the Events palette and clicking the trash can. Just keep one thing in mind though: Everything below the event you delete will be deleted with it
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