Hey, This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. I'm going to show you how to quickly create
this simple, but effective color stretch text effect. Before we begin,
if you want to know as soon as I upload new Photoshop tutorials, smash that Subscribe button
and please remember to click that "like" button, which lets YouTube know you like my stuff. First,
we'll create a new document by going to File and New. I'll make it 1920 by 1080 pixels with
a resolution of 150 pixels per inch. Its color mode is RGB and 8 bits per channel. If the color
box isn't black, open the background contents list and click black. Then, click Create or Open.
Open your Horizontal Type tool and Type Picker. Pick any font. I'll make it 147 points,
but feel free to make it any size you want. I'll make its aliasing sharp and center alignment.
If the color box isn't white, click it to open a Color Picker and pick white so we can
easily see our text over the black background. Click on the document and type out your text.
To center it, we'll open our Move Tool and press Ctrl or Cmd +A to select our document. Click the
Align Horizontal Centers icon and the Align Vertical Centers icon. Deselect it by pressing
Ctrl or Cmd + D. We'll drag our text up in order to give us more room for the color trail below it.
Press and hold the Shift key, as we drag it. Pressing Shift kept our text perfectly vertical.
We'll convert our text into a smart object so we can modify it non-destructively. To do this,
click the icon at the upper right corner of the layers panel and click Convert to Smart Object.
Double-click an empty area of the text layer to open its Layer Style window.
Click Gradient Overlay. Click the gradient bar and the full spectrum preset.
The blend mode is normal, the opacity is 100%, and the style is linear. The angle is zero degrees,
the scale is 100%, and the method is linear. We can slide the gradient left or right inside
our text by dragging it. Convert this into a smart object as well. Make a copy of it by pressing Ctrl
or Cmd +J. Hide the copy and make the original active. Open your transform tool by pressing Ctrl
or Cmd +T. Go to the top, middle anchor point and press and hold Alt or Option +Shift as you drag it
up approximately this much. Then, press Enter or Return or click the check mark at the top. Go to
Filter, Blur, and Motion Blur. Make the angle minus 90 degrees and the distance 2000 pixels.
Notice the colors are much darker now. That's because we stretched our text.
The more it's stretched, the more transparent they become. Let's collapse the smart filters
to save some space in the layers panel. To restore back their original color vibrancy,
we'll make multiple copies of it stacked on top of each other. Press Ctrl or Cmd +J five times.
By the way, if you're wondering why it says "Copy 6" even though we made just 5 copies,
it's because the top copy is the first copy. We'll convert these into one smart object
by Shift-clicking the original color sketch layer to make all the color sketch layers active and
clicking convert to smart object. Change the blend mode to Dissolve and click the layer mask icon.
Open your gradient tool and make sure the linear gradient icon is active.
Open the gradient presets and the black and white thumbnail. Go to the bottom of your document and
press and hold the Shift key as you drag the tool approximately halfway up. Then, release.
The reason the colors fade out at the bottom is because the layer mask is masking them out.
Think of layer masks as stencils. White reveals and black conceals. Convert it
into a smart object. Change its blend mode to Hard Light and reduce its opacity to 80%.
Make the top text visible. Next, we're going to hide the stretched colors above our text.
Click the layer mask icon to make a layer mask next to the stretched colors.
Open your Rectangular Marquee tool and drag it over the colors so the bottom of the selection
is flush with the characters that have flat horizontal tops. We'll fill the selection
with black and since our foreground color is black press Alt or Option + Delete. Then, deselect it.
To mask out the colors behind the characters that are rounded at the top, open your Pencil Tool and
Pencil Picker. Open a hard, round pencil tip and make sure its Hardness and Opacity are both 100%.
If you are using CC 2018 or later, make sure smoothing is 0%. I did an entire tutorial of the
Stroke Smoothing feature, so if you want to watch it, I provided its link in my video's description.
To adjust the pencil size, make sure your CapsLock key is off and press the right or left bracket
key on your keyboard. Draw over the colors that extend past the top of the rounded characters,
as well as the colors that don't extend down from the characters themselves.
If you want to angle your text in perspective, convert your text layers into one smart object
and open your Transform Tool. Go to a corner and press and hold Ctrl + Alt + Shift on Windows
or Cmd +Option + Shift on a Mac as you drag the tool up. Then, press Enter or Return.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. Thanks for watching!