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    Intermediate  
 
  Cool Transparent Text Effect in Photoshop® Part One

This tutorial shows you how to create the following effect in Adobe® Photoshop:

cleartext.jpg

Notice that the text is defined by a black shaded area in the upper left of the text and a white shaded area in the lower right of the text. It gives an embossed look as if light is being cast from below and to the right.

This example uses a 72 ppi image with 60 point type. Accordingly, should you decide to use a higher resolution image or greater point size type you will need to adjust some of the specs. In that case I'll call out notes where applicable.

Although I used Photoshop version 5.5 for this example, both version 5.0 and 5.5 support editable text layers (text that you can change). You could do the tutorial with version 4.0, but the text won't be editable once you create it because it will be rasterized (made into pixels).

1. In this example I chose a sky image because I thought it was fitting for the effect. Load it up into Photoshop by clicking File > Open.

cleartext01.jpg

2. Click anywhere on the image with the Type Tool typetool.gif . In the dialog, pick an appropriate bold or black font and point size. I used 60 point Arial Black in this example. Choose "Smooth" for the Anti-Alias setting (circled below).

cleartext02.gif

3. This is what your image should look like after creating the text. Don't worry, Photoshop creates the text on a new layer so it won't affect the pixels of the background image.

cleartext03.jpg

4. In the Layers palette Cmd + Click (Mac®) / Ctrl + Click (Windows®) the new layer. This will create a selection in the shape of the text. You will see the hand pointer with a square marquee when you hold down the modifier key (Cmd or Ctrl) over the layer when you click.

cleartext04.gif

5. This is what the image will look like with a selection in the shape of the text. The selection will be defined by its "marching ants" marquee.

cleartext05.jpg

6. Next click Select > Save Selection.... In the dialog, just accept the defaults. When you click "OK" Photoshop will save the selection as a new channel (circled).

cleartext06.gif

Click Here To Continue...

 
 

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