hey what's going on guys today we are inside of affinity designer
and i want to show you how you can create an effect like this where we've cut some text
out of the background image as well as apply the paragraph of text in the background which we are
free to move around and edit so a design like this would make a really good wedding gift for example
if you used to maybe just change the background image to be a photo of the bride in the groom
and just change this text inside of the text to be relevant to the couple whether that's going to be
where they met or their first date or any other kind of information along those lines
so if this is something that you would like to learn then let's go ahead and get started so the
first thing that we need to do is go up and create a brand new canvas so we're going to go up to the
top menu bar on the left hand side and choose file and we're going to go to new and because i
said that this will make a really good photo as a wedding gift we're just going to base it off that
so i'm going to go ahead and choose photo inside of my presets menu and i'm going to go over and
i'm going to choose that 10 by 8 then over to the right hand side of that the only thing that
we need to change inside of the layout if you wish to print this is going to be your dpi you need to
ensure that this is on 300 every time you want to print as it will give you the best printing
quality so with all that selected all we've got to do now is go down and just hit that create button
then inside of our new canvas the first thing that we want to do is import an image that we're going
to use as our background and the way we can do that is just go all the way up to the top left
hand corner to where it says file navigate down to place and then just simply search your hard
drive for any images that you may want to use i'm going to use that one right there i'm just going
to drop this anywhere just for the moment so this image right here i got from pixels.com and this
is a royalty free image meaning that you can use it however you like without having to pay for it
however all that they require is that you either give written credit to any of the photographers
that create the images by simply adding their name maybe somewhere down in the bottom left or
right hand corner of the image or on your project or another way you can do that is
just by simply adding a download link of where you originally got the image from which is what
you will find in my description if you guys want to go ahead and download the same image
so with that out the way what we want to do next is just fill this entire canvas with the image
so i'm going to go and zoom out just to make it a little bit easier when it comes to moving
and framing this to where we want it so if you hit command or control minus on your keyboard
that will zoom out it's going to make it a lot easier when it comes to just resizing this
and then just position that to where you want it so for me that looks pretty good like that
and then i'm going to go and zoom back in with command or control 0 and then that will fit to
screen then next we just need to bring in the text that we're going to use of our image so if
we navigate over to the left hand side toolbar menu and we just select that artistic text tool
go back over to the image and just draw out a rust size that you're going to be happy with
and then just simply type in anything that you would like to use for me i'm going to stick with
the original image that i showed you so i'm just going to go and write love story but you are free
to write anything you like inside of here then once you're happy with your title just go up
and select your move tool that is going to allow us to move this into position as well as resize
that to make it a lot bigger or smaller and then just move that to where you're going to be happy
with for me there looks pretty good so i'm going to leave it right there in fact looking at that
i think i want it just to be a little bit smaller probably around that size and then just move that
back into place once again so what we need to do now is write our paragraph of text which is
going to be in the background so if we head back over to the left hand side toolbar menu
this time instead of selecting artistic text tool we're going to choose the frame text tool
then we just need to draw ourselves out a text frame which is going to be big enough to cover
that love stories or whatever it is that you may have written so something around that size
would be perfectly fine so at this point is where you would start typing in anything that will be
relevant to the couple that you are creating for however for me just to be quick and demonstrate
i'm going to insert some filler text and the way you can do that is by simply right clicking on
your mouse inside of your text frame and just go down to where it says insert filler text
so now you can see we've got a load of text inside of here which makes no sense whatsoever
this is just used as a placeholder so this would be perfectly fine just for our demonstration the
one thing i don't like is this paragraph spacing right here so i do want to fix that so i'm going
to go ahead and hit command or control a to select all i'm going to head over to the right hand side
to where it says paragraph if you guys can't see paragraph then just make your way over to the view
menu on your top menu bar go down to where it says studio and just ensure that you have paragraph
checked and you'll have access to this menu also so once you are inside of your paragraph section
what i want to change is this setting right here which is going to be our space after paragraph
i'm just going to reset that back to zero just hit enter and then that looks a lot better for
me then we'll just head back over to our layers so if this is too big for you you can simply
just adjust that if you like and make it a lot smaller to fit your text it's entirely up to you
so next we're now going to go back over to our layers and we're just going to move this text
frame all the way down to the bottom and we'll do that by selecting that and just dragging that so
that essentially sits underneath everything else and as you can see at the moment we can't see that
at all but that is going to change once we come to apply some of these effects then we're going
to go back over to our layers and we need to make a duplicated version of this love story so if we
select that layer and we right click on our mouse go down to where it says duplicate once we select
that you can now see we have two versions of this available so if we select the original love story
as well as this background image and the way that we'll do that is hold command or control on your
keyboard while selecting the other layer then that will select both of those at the same time for you
then we need to go ahead and subtract this text from this background image and the way that you
would normally do that is just by coming up to this menu bar on the top left hand corner
which are going to be our shape building tools and you will select that subtract button right there
however we're going to have to do a little work around beforehand as you can't subtract from an
image so just to quickly demonstrate that before i move on i'll go ahead and hit that subtract
and you can see what's happened so we still got the outline of all the text but the image itself
has completely disappeared and that is not what we wanted to do so i'm going to hit command or
control z just to undo that and we'll go ahead and create this work around in order to cut out
from the image so the way this is going to work is by nesting this background image inside of
another shape so if we go over to the left hand side and we grab our rectangle all we've got to
do is just drag from one side of the canvas to the other just ensuring we fill the entire canvas
once you've done that we can just drag that down either above or below the image it doesn't matter
then we're going to drag this image inside of this shape and the way we'll do that is just by pulling
up and slightly over to the right this is big blue bar appear then just let go this now is inside of
that rectangle so if we could turn that on and off you can see and what this is going to allow us to
do now is inside this rectangle is just be able to subtract the text from the shape so once again
we'll do exactly what we did before we select that love story on top of that and then we'll
select the rectangle at the same time holding command or control then we'll go back up to the
top menu bar again and we'll hit that subtract button so right now it doesn't look as though
it's actually done anything but that is because we still have the other love story layer turned
on over here in our layers if we just go ahead and turn off the visibility we can now see that it has
in fact cut out the letters from the background image and we can also see that paragraph of text
that we created earlier and now we can just move that around freely however you like so now we've
done that what we want to do is go over and turn our love story back on once again and we're going
to make another duplicated layer of this love story so once again we're going to right click
we're going to go down to duplicate and then we've got two more versions of this once again then once
you have your two versions select both of these at the same time holding down your command or control
then we're gonna go to the top menu bar and we're gonna go ahead and turn this the other way around
by flipping vertically then we're just going to go and drag this down into place to wherever you want
to put it for me somewhere around there would be perfectly fine and we'll come back to this in just
a moment but first of all we want to come back to our background image because this is where we now
need to kind of make it look 3d and the way we're going to do that is go and open up our effects
which is right down here at the bottom and inside of here we are going to choose our outer shadow
and we're just going to change the radius and the offset to around five pixels on both just
hit enter and we'll just go ahead and close that and now you can see we kind of got that 3d
indented look going on then what we're going to do next is we're going to select this bottom love
story and i'm going to change the color of that one so we can't see that at the moment because
it's sat underneath the one on top but at the moment that's kind of what we're going for so
once we selected that and we change the color to black we're going to go back down to the effects
menu and we're going to put on the gaussian or gaussian blur however you like to pronounce that
and i'm going to give this maybe around 10 pixels this is trial and error just to see what kind of
effect that you can get so something like that may be a little bit strong i'm going to go and try
five that's looking a little bit better so i'm going to go ahead and close that and at this point
i just want to drag this down a little bit it's kind of just creating a drop shadow underneath
the text kind of like that and then we just want to go and toggle the visibility or the opacity
on this just to make it look that a little bit better so if we come back over to our layers
and we got to where it says opacity we're going to change that hundred down to maybe around 30
just to fade that out a little bit just so it's still there but it doesn't look so bold so
somewhere like that is going to be perfect so that layer is now finished if we now go to the other
love story which is a layer on top of that and we go back down to our effects once again we're going
to go on outer shadow and we're gonna give the same radius an offset like we did on the other one
which will be five pixels let's go ahead and hit the enter button only this time around we want to
change the angle on this instead of being at 315 degrees i want to bring that all the way down to
270 so the shadow is actually falling underneath it rather than to the right of the text it just
makes it look that more realistic so we can close that once we are happy and that is finished on
that step for the moment so if you find you don't generally like the way this background love story
looks you can come in and adjust that if you want to it's entirely up to you to have a little play
around with it and see what you can achieve so going back to my original image i showed you
at the beginning we can see their faces through this and we'll just go back and have a quick look
so as you can see we can kind of see through it but it's a bit blurred in the background and the
text is different and it's white so we'll go ahead and create that effect now so if we go back to the
project and all we got to do to put the image inside of this text as well is we've got to come
back over to our layers open up the curve that we just created which is our image inside of our
rectangle we are going to make a duplicated copy of our image so if we right click on that and just
duplicate that so then we end up with two of these all we have to do now is just drag this outside
of the rectangle and just put this underneath that frame text tool right at the bottom as you can see
so now you can see how it's starting to come together but what we need to do on this new
background image is apply a blur to that so if we select that layer and we go down to our effects
once again we're going to choose that gaussian blur and i'm going to give that maybe five pixels
to see what it looks like go ahead hit enter that looks pretty good to me so i'm going to leave
that the way it is if you want a bigger blur than that then go ahead and just change these numbers
but for now i'm just going to move on so with that now finished and complete what i also want
to do is just change the opacity of this which is going to kind of give it a glass effect so
if we come up now to the opacity and we just slowly drop that down a little bit
and just so it kind of fades into the white but then just bring it back up so we can see the image
in the background but it's kind of separating the text from the image so somewhere around
65 is probably a good number and now that step is complete so once we've done that we can go ahead
and just select our frame text tool it's going to double tap and i'm going to command or control a
to select all of this then i'm going to change the color of this text over to be white and i'm
going to change the font of this to make it look a little bit better so i'm going to go up to the
top left hand corner to my fonts i'm going to go to recent so i can choose someone i've used before
and i'm going to go for maybe this one right there and it's going to make that a little bit bigger
with the font just so i can read it a little bit better so maybe around that size is good and if
you need to you can just freely move that around just to place that wherever you want it to go
and then just to make this text stand out just a little bit more we're going to go and apply a
drop shadow on that also so if we go back to our effects and we just put the outer shadow on we're
only going to need a small number on this as the text is pretty small so i'm going to go for maybe
one pixel and one pixel and just see how that looks and i'm quite happy with that so i'm just
going to go and move that a little bit kind of fill up that r a little bit better than what it
was so somewhere around there and now that step is complete so we've also done the same thing on this
text underneath in terms of being able to see the image through that so if i go back to the original
and we take a close look at these letters you can see the image in the background which has also
got a blur so if you want to go ahead and do the same thing we'll go back to that original project
and we're going to make another duplicated version of this background image so right click on that
hit that duplicate button then this time round we are going to nest this inside of this top
love story so just pull it up and drag that to the right to that bar strings and then let go
and now that is inside of that text but what we're going to do which is different now is we're going
to flip this image upside down so it kind of looks like it's fell out of this text and it's
hanging upside down so if we make sure we selected that image and we go back up to the top menu bar
and we just select that flip vertical and that is going to change the image the other way around
and just like before we're going to give that a blur so back down to our effects give that
a gaussian or a gaussian blur we use five pixels last time so it's going to mirror those settings
and now we can see we've also got that blade effect with the image
and just like before we're going to drop that opacity just to fade that in a little bit better
just so we can kind of see it's there but it's not too in your face so somewhere around 41 or
40 would be perfectly fine so i'm just going to leave it there then just like on the original
it's just a case of adding a bit more text up here and just down here in the bottom corner so if we
go back you can just see what i've got there and i've got here so i'm going to be quick here i'm
just going to copy and paste that but you guys can just use that with the artistic text tool
so i'm going to paste that in i'm going to make sure that's on the top of my layer so i can see it
it's going to move that into position and just resize that to fit and then just slightly move
that down with my keyboard shortcut arrows and i'm going to go back to the other image so i can
copy that one at the bottom also i'm going to hit command c or control c for copy come back
and command or control v for paste and it's going to move that into place as well up here
and just make that a little bit smaller somewhere around there and just bring that down roughly with
my arrow keys then that is complete all i've done here is added a drop shadow like we did
on these other text files and just gave that a different font so that is generally finished in
terms of doing this effect if you want to get a little bit more creative we could actually come
inside of this text that we got here which will be the love story and not the frame text so i'm
going to go ahead and change that to the curves menu right there if we come up now to the left
hand side and we just select our node tool which is that white arrow right there we can actually
come in and start deleting other parts of this if you wanted to so if you want to get rid of maybe
the middle section of this o and just go ahead and delete that you can and same one over here
as well as that r just to make it look a little bit more creative then once we come off here you
can see how that has come together so that also looks pretty good in my opinion and this is always
going to look different depending on what image you use in the background and what kind of words
you put in and fonts and so on but i do think this looks pretty good the way it is and would
look great if you used to print it and frame it so before i go ahead and wrap this video up this
is another thing that i wanted to tell you and that is that you don't necessarily need to use
a background image in order to achieve this effect if you maybe wanted to just create something like
this for your desktop background then you just got to come back over to your layers and we're
just going to turn off all these images so we'll turn that one off as well as that one and that one
then we'll just go ahead and change just a few different colors in here so if i go and grab a
rectangle tool once again just to change the background color of this so i'm going to give
that maybe more of that gray color bring that all the way down to the bottom then just keep changing
some of the colors on these different letters just to give it a bit more of a different effect
and just get a little bit more creative maybe adjust that background shadow on there then
maybe just go ahead and change these colors as well so this stand out just a little bit more
so anywhere around there will be fine and we'll go ahead and change the other one as well and that
will do as a quick demonstration so of course this doesn't look as good as it did with the image but
the option is there if you want to create it this way so i hope you enjoyed today's video if you did
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if any of you guys are new to affinity designer and you're not quite sure how these tools work
then i do have a beginner crash course available on my youtube channel as well as
a beginner course for affinity photo and affinity publisher so feel free to go and check those out
and if you did enjoy this video and you want to see some more my content and just
click on one of these other videos available on the screen right now
but for now i hope you have a great day and i will see you in the next video