Starwars and Fancy Text in Photoshop AV Tutorial

[Lin Evans]

Hi Folks,

Part 2 is done which will show you how to make some fancy text effects in Photoshop including the popular "Star Wars" effect where the bottom of the text spreads out and the top compresses in and it appears the text lies down a bit. I'll cover some more in a future tutorial on how to add to this in P2E but this will get you started. About a 35 meg download.

http://www.lin-evans.net/p2e/starwars.zip

Best regards,

Lin

P.S. - If I'm taking too much bandwidth and time with this on the forum, let me know and I'll save it all up and post the links in a single post to whatever I do next.

Thanks!

[thedom]

Lin, I just have posted your tutorials in the "Useful Tutorials for slideshows" section.

But it's only links to your files.

The StarWars effect is just great !

Thanks.

[Lin Evans]

Lin, I just have posted your tutorials in the "Useful Tutorials for slideshows" section.

But it's only links to your files.

The StarWars effect is just great !

Thanks.

Hi Dom,

Thanks! I meant to address one of your questions in the Tutorial, but neglected to do so even though I "hinted" about discussing it later.

In addition to the StarWars effect obtained with the Text Warp tool, you can also select the result then apply free transform to make the vertical perspective shorter thus make the text appear to "lie back" even more. The reason I omitted this step is that of course you can apply this same effect in P2E by manipulating the zoom independently on the XY axis and that may be even a better way since you may want to make the effect "greater" as the text scrolls upward and gets smaller as if disappearing in the distance. By doing it in Photoshop it would be more or less "fixed" and more difficult to manipulate.

I suppose either way will work though and it's certainly possible to get many more variations via the free transform after you have the initial effects.

Best regards,

Lin

[Boogie]

Hi Dom,

Thanks! I meant to address one of your questions in the Tutorial, but neglected to do so even though I "hinted" about discussing it later.

In addition to the StarWars effect obtained with the Text Warp tool, you can also select the result then apply free transform to make the vertical perspective shorter thus make the text appear to "lie back" even more. The reason I omitted this step is that of course you can apply this same effect in P2E by manipulating the zoom independently on the XY axis and that may be even a better way since you may want to make the effect "greater" as the text scrolls upward and gets smaller as if disappearing in the distance. By doing it in Photoshop it would be more or less "fixed" and more difficult to manipulate.

I suppose either way will work though and it's certainly possible to get many more variations via the free transform after you have the initial effects.

Best regards,

Lin

Hi Lin

Part 2 - Great tutorial and nice and clear. I like the way the cursor is flashed with a circle to show where the cursor is.

I look forward to Part 3 to incorporate the Starwars text into PTE. Hope you will also cover the way to apply the same effect with the PTE program (as noted above).

Regards

Boogie

[thedom]

I like the way the cursor is flashed with a circle to show where the cursor is.

Hi Lin,

I like this cursor effect too (I prefer the circle in red).

Could you please tell us where we can download it ?

Thanks.

[Lin Evans]

Hi Lin,

I like this cursor effect too (I prefer the circle in red).

Could you please tell us where we can download it ?

Thanks.

The red and blue circles (left and right mouse click) are part of the Screen Recorder Gold program:

http://www.capture-screen.com/

The larger black and white circle is a feature of the software which came with my wireless mouse (Hewlett-Packard). If you go to "Control Panel" "Mouse" "Pointers" you probably have a number of options for your mouse. One of these on my system is to allow dedicating the "Ctrl" key to create the circle effect whenever you depress it.

Best regards,

Lin

[ronwil]

As Lin says if you go to Control Panel>Mouse>Pointer Options, the last item is "Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key". Check this to activate. I find this very useful in Photoshop when I am cloning and the pointer doesn't show up clearly on the image.

Ron [uK]

[thedom]

Lin, Ron,

Thank you very much for your explanations.

I was able to activate this option (grey circle).