Photographic effect

Because Photoshop is a pixel-based editor, we can create even naturalistic photographic effects, something we could not do in Illustrator, Coral Draw or FreeHand.
As an example, I will add “Halloween” text with backlight.

First, we select the text layer and click Ctrl + Alt + T on our keyboards.
This makes a copy of our text in its own layer.
In the options bar, we give the value -115% in the box “H:”.
This reverses the letters vertically and enlarges the letters by 15%
We click a few times on the button with the down arrow on our keyboard, or give a value in the Y: box, to copy the text below the original.

We set the mode of the layer to “Multiply”.
The “Opacity” (transparency) box is configured to 90%.
Because this is a shadow, we ultimately need to fade it.
Click “Filter” – “Blur” – “Gaussian Blur” … in the menu bar.
A dialog appears with the message that we must rasterize the layer.
Important: Once you have edited a text layer so that it must be converted into pixels, it can not be edited as text.

In the “Gaussian Blur” window, enter a value for the blur.
In my case 2 is enough, but this varies from photo to photo.
Click OK when you are satisfied.

Now we have to unroll the shade in the width to keep it a bit realistic.
With the shadow layer still selected, click on the buttons Ctr + T on the keyboard.
This opens up the “Free Transform” view for this layer.
Click and drag the bottom left and bottom right blocks out.
Hold the keys Ctrl + Shift pressed while you drag.
When you do this you can see the values ??in the boxes W: and H: change.

This already looks good:

In the next lesson, we will add backlight to the text.

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