Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show you how to create a dramatic, deep overlapping text effect with a reflection.
This is an update of a tutorial I did many years ago.
This update is quicker and more efficient.
Create a new document by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + N or by going to File and New.
You can make it any size and resolution.
I'll make mine: 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels...and its resolution, 150 pixels per inch.
Make the background, black.
Then, click "Create" or on older versions, click "Open".
Check your foreground and background colors.
If they aren't black and white, press "D" on your keyboard.
We want white to be our foreground color, since that's the color we'd like our text to be.
If black is your foreground color, invert them by pressing "x" on your keyboard.
Open your Horizontal Type Tool and Type Picker.
I'm using a font called, "Alfarn Regular", but you can pick any thick, heavy font you have.
I'll make its size 180 points, but feel free to make it any size you'd like
as long as all of the characters in your word fit on 1 line.
Click on your document and type the first letter in your word.
Open your Move Tool and drag your character to the right.
Write down the word that you'll be typing out and count the number of characters in it.
We'll be making copies of the character that will give you the total amount of characters in your word.
For example, I'll be typing out the word, "SHADOW", which contains 6 characters.
I'll press Ctrl or Cmd + J five times to make 5 copies of it, which makes a total of 6 characters.
We’ll be individually dragging each character into position, but before we do,
make sure “Auto Select” is unchecked.
This will prevent the wrong characters from being automatically selected as we click on our canvas.
Press and hold the Shift key as you drag the first letter across to the other side.
Holding Shift kept our character perfectly horizontal as we dragged it.
Name the top layer the first letter of your word.
I'll name mine, "S", which is the first letter of my word, "Shadow".
Double-click the large "T" under it to highlight the character.
Type the second letter in your word.
As before, open your Move Tool, press and hold "Shift" as you drag it next to your first letter.
Double-click the large "T" of the third character to highlight it and type the third letter of your word.
Open back your Move Tool, press and hold Shift as you drag the third letter next to the second character.
Continue these steps for each character in your word.
Make the top letter active and click the Layer Mask icon to make a layer mask next to it.
Open your Gradient Tool.
Make sure the Linear gradient icon is active and open the Gradient presets.
Click the black and white thumbnail.
Go to the right edge of your first letter and press and hold Shift as you drag the gradient tool to the left edge.
Then, release.
Make your second letter active and, as before, click the Layer Mask icon to make a layer mask next to it.
Go to the right edge of the second letter, press and hold Shift
and drag the tool to its left edge.
Continue these steps with the rest of your letters.
Next, we'll individually slide each letter to the left to overlap them, but before we do,
open your Move Tool and check "Auto Select".
Once we click on a letter, it will automatically activate its respective layer in the Layers panel.
Press and hold Shift as we drag our second letter to the left, overlapping the first
letter approximately this much.
Click the third letter to make it active, press and hold Shift and drag it over to overlap the second letter.
Continue these steps to overlap the rest of our letters.
Now that we slid each letter into position, uncheck "Auto Select".
Shift-click the top letter to make all the letters active
and press Ctrl or Cmd + G to place them into a folder.
We'll adjust the size of our the word by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + T open our Transform Tool.
Go to a corner and when you see a diagonal, double-arrow, drag it out or in to resize the entire word.
Then, press Enter or Return or click the check-mark at the top.
Next, we'll create its reflection.
Make a copy of the folder and name the lower folder, "Reflection".
Go to edit, Transform and "Flip Vertical".
Go to the word and press and hold Shift as you drag the reflection down until it touches
the bottom-most letter of the word.
Reduce its opacity to 25% and click the Layer Mask icon to make a layer mask next to it.
Go to the bottom of the reflection and press "G" to open back your Gradient Tool. press
and hold Shift as you drag it to the top of the reflection.
Lastly, we'll center our word and its reflection on our document by Shift-clicking the top
folder to make it active, as well and pressing Ctrl or Cmd + A to select our entire document.
Press "v" to open back our Move Tool and click the "Align Vertical Centers" icon.
Deselect it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + D. To slide it up or down, press and hold Shift as you drag it.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
Thanks for watching!