• Board index

iText Tutorial

1. First you need to create a new 320*320 pixel transparent image.
2. Then, select the text tool (press T), Select the "Bitstream Charter Bold Italic" font (available here), and a size of about 402px. Choose a light blue colour such as #007FFF.
3. Click the image and then type an "e" character in the text dialog that pops up.
4. Using the move tool (press M), roughly centre the new text layer.



5. Click Layer->Merge Down, to merge the newly created text layer into the transparent background layer.
6. Click Layer->Transparency->Alpha To Selection, to select everything on the current layer that isn't transparent.
7. Now click Select->Save to channel to save the current selection as a new channel. Doing this will enable us to either "recall" the selection at a later date, using Channel To Selection, or as in this case, we can modify the selection and use it as a mask for the lighting effects filter.



8. Click Select->Shrink and shrink the current selection by 10px. This value will vary if you're using a different sized image.
9. Create a new layer, with Layer->New Layer and make sure it is the active layer.
10. Select white as the foreground colour, and using the fill tool , fill the selection on the new layer with white.



11. Select None (Ctrl+Shift+A). Click Filters->Blur-Gaussian Blur (IIR) and perform a 20px blur on the white layer.
12. Change the layer mode to "Overlay" in the layers dialog. Now duplicate the layer (Layer->Duplicate Layer). This duplication will help to enhance the highlights.



13. Now activate the channel we saved earlier and repeat the 20px gaussian blur (Filters->Repeat "Gaussian Blur (IIR)"). This provides us with a nice 3-D mask to base the lighting effects on. You may not be able to see the blur actually happen, but as you can see in the closeup screenshot, it does do the blur we want. If you want to see/edit the channel mask in the main image window, you can in fact hide all layers using their eye icons, and then show the channel using it's eye icon (this is off by default).



14. Create a new layer and fill it with black, in the same way we filled with white earlier. Make sure this black layer sits at the top of the layer stack, set the layer mode to "Screen".
15. Click Filters->Light Effects->Lighting Effects to open the lighting effects filter
16. Make sure all the settings are specified as shown in the following screenshots. The "Bump Map" tab has a dropdown where you need to select the channel that we blurred, if you didn't give the channel an easy to remember name, it should be identifiable by the blurry thumbnail.







17. Almost done!



18. This is what the finished product looks like after creating a white backdrop, and a light drop shadow.