A-V Tutorials
Using the Text Tool
Home
The Basics
Eraser
Text
Dodge/Burn
Color
Links

Using the text tool is pretty simple but there a number of special effects that you can use to make your text interesting. 

 

THE BASICS
 

Go to File>New and create a new image 500 pixels wide and 150 pixels tall.  Go to THIS PICTURE.  Save it, copy and paste it into your base image.  Scale it down to 510 pixels wide.  Shift it so that Arwen is totally visible.  Anchor the layer.  Now go to Tools>Color Tools>Brightness and Contrast.  Shift the contrast to about 40.  Now go to the main “control panel”.  Go to the text tool.  Choose the Palace Script font.  Change the color to “ece9d7” and the font size to 76.  Click on the right side of the picture.  Write “Fading.” in the Text Editor box that pops up.

text11.jpg

So consider this the first step.  It is a graphic although not a very sophisticated one.  We can apply several effects to make it more interesting.

 

ERASING

 

I’ve already written a fairly detailed explanation of how to do this but here’s a way to think about it a little differently:  You can use the erasers to add to the meaning of the text.  We will use the image we just made. 

text21.jpg

Go to the eraser tool.  Set the opacity to 21.  Erase the whole “Fading” once.  Now go back and erase the “ading”.  Continue to erase one less letter each time.  Erase the whole thing one more time.  You’re done.

text22.jpg

SOFTGLOW
 

Start where we started for the erasing part.  Go to Image>Merge Visible Layers and select Clip to Image.  Now copy the image and paste it.  Go to Filters>Artistic>Softglow.  Set the Glow Radius to 22, the Brightness to .93, and the Sharpness to .85.  Now go the eraser and erase the whole thing once.  Ta-da!

text31.jpg

This is basically erasing still but a little more advanced.  Let’s start with the unerased “fading”.  Now erase it twice.  Go back to the text tool and click somewhere else on the picture.  Make sure you don’t click in the yellow box since this will make you edit the “Fading” part.  If you really want to write directly on top of it you can make a new layer.  Here’s where we are at this point:

text41.jpg

Now write something else.  I put “leaving this world”.  Erase this five times. 

text42.jpg

You can continue to build up layers of text using this method and erasing any number of times.

 

BLUR

 

This one is pretty simple but can definitely be effective.  Go to Filters>Blur>Blur.

text51.jpg

If you want to control the amount of blur go to Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur.  You can change the Blur radius to make it more or less blurry.  (Actually, I’m only assuming you can make it more blurry.  I haven’t actually tried. 

text52.jpg

You can also copy and paste the text (it won’t automatically blur).  Then you have the blurry text underneath with the solid text on top.  I think this is an interesting effect.

text53.jpg