Making Text Look Embossed -

This tutorial is about Making Text Look Embossed. Great for both card making and scrap booking. As you go through you will be able to increase the size of any of the pictures by just clicking on them. We are using Paintshop Pro (v8) but you will be able to use similar techniques in both GIMP and Photoshop.

First Make a new image by clicking on File / New. The size isn’t desperately important but at this stage you should make the working area bigger than the final image you will want. You can always resize the image later and it is always much better to make an image smaller rather than larger.

In our example we are making it 800 x 400 pixels at 150 DPI. This will give us an imge just over 5″ x 2″.

The first thing we will do to this is add another layer. This is done by clicking the new layer button on the layer palette or by using Layers /New Raster Layer….

Make sure this top layer remains highlighted as we will be working on this to start with.

Now click the text tool. Ensure that, in the tool options it is set on vector, a reasonable size and the font of your choosing. Don’t worry if you don’t like your first choice of size or font you can always change them a few times until you have it as you want it.

In the text box you should add the text that you want. If you want to change it’s font or size you will have to highlight it. Again the size isn’t to important as, with vector images, you will be able to drag it to the size you want .

So click OK and then more the vector writing so it is positioned how you like. You can also grab a corner and make it larger or smaller as you wish.

Now, using the Selection Tool / Magic wand and holding down shift, click on each letter to select them (holding down shift ensures each letter is added to your selection. If you didn’t hold down shift the selection would change from one letter to the next.

You should end up with all of your letters / words selected (as above). This means whatever we do next will only affect the selected area

First we are going to use the “Inner Bevel” tool. You will find this under Effects / 3D Effects / Inner Bevel. When you select this anther window will pop up with lots of options in it. Don’t be afraid to have a play with these option, you can change them again and again. You can see the results in the little preview window on the right, or, if you prefer, you can click on the “eye” to see it previewed in your main image.

If you have trouble you can copy the settings in the image on the right here (click to enlarge) or you can click the dice a few time which will give you random setting.

Next we are going to add some drop shadow to the image. This is quite simple. Just go to Effects / 3D Effects / Drop Shaddow….

Again another pop up window will appear and you will see another set of option. We have chosen (and normally choose) black for the shadow and quite a small offset. You are free to experiment. The preview is available for you to see how it looks and it wont actually take effect until you press OK. (Even then if you don’t like how it looks you can always Edit / Undo)

Nearly there now, just two things left to do. The first is to change the colour of the background to what we want. To do this make sure the correct colour is selected in the lower of the two colour boxes. If it isn’t just click on the box to change it. After checking that then you move to the layer palette and select the background.

To complete the background colour just select the fill tool and right click on the image. The chosen colour will be flooded onto the background layer.

The last task (apart from saving) is to crop the image so we don’t have all the extra background round the words (unless you specifically want it). Just choose the rectangular selection tool and the select the adrea you want. Once you have done this just go to Image / Crop to selection.

That completes the tutorial. As normal it may seem difficult but after you have actually done it a couple of times it will become like second nature to you.Once you have done this you will want to save the image. For websites we suggest “jpg” as the format and for printing out we suggest tiff. To do this choose File / Save as. In the box which pops up you will be able to select where the image is saved, the name you give it and the type of image it is saved as.