GFX Tutorial #1 - Text Help

[jhatty8 675]

Yeah I don't really have any ideas so I'm just going to help out with GFX until I get burnt out.

 

Text is arguably the hardest aspect of creating a sig. It needs to: look cool, fit in with the vibe of the sig, and be readable. It's difficult to get all three down consistently, but in this tutorial, I'm going to show some cool ways of making your text more readable.

 

I am using Photoshop for this, but it can also be done on PHOTOPEA using the same tools. It's free and it's a website, go use it if you can't get Photoshop. 

 

 

Alright we have a nice start here, got our render and a cool background with some other work to blend it together a bit. But now I think I want to add some text.

 

 

I like this font and I think it's positioned pretty well. But it could be a lot cooler and it doesn't exactly fit in with the sig, it kinda just stands out over top. I also want to keep the readability of the name.

 

Strat #1 - Render/background color shift

 

Duplicate the text layer (ctrl+j), move the duplicate to below the render and change the color (I'm using a lighter color from the background). Select the render layer (ctrl + click on the layer icon), then click on the original text layer, and hit the rectangle with the circle button in the bottom left (layer mask). Should look something like this.

 

 

Strat #2 - Warp tool

 

This is probably my favorite cheat code, the warp tool. I could write a whole college essay about what you can use this for, but for now: select everything (ctrl + a), copy and paste everything (ctrl + shift + c, make new layer over everything else, ctrl + shift + v). You'll generally want to do this at the end cause you can't edit anything underneath this layer. Take the warp tool on the left, click around the text, and drag it slightly in some direction so there's a bit of blur and distortion.

 

 

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Both of these are good starts, but you should definitely try to combine techniques and sizing and color and other stuff to get the best results. I have some other text strats but I got too many words already.

 

Let me know if there's anything you want to learn and i'll do it next week