Help with fonts in Photoshop

[jlcharles]

So, as part of a photo gig I have coming up in a week, I am going to be offering a magazine cover for purchase. (It's a job doing a high school ice hockey team's individual and team portraits)

So, I picked up a copy of SI tonight to kind of get ideas and I really loved the font they used on it. Now, I have a font I am already using, Impact, that is really close, but I am more looking for ideas on how to manipulate the font and add effects to it to get it like this one. It has a kind of white outline, outlined in black with a drop shadow onto the inside of the letters. Any help would be great.

 

[CanadaRAM]

Do you have Illustrator?
Fonts are easier to manipulate in a vector program.

Otherwise you want to try outlining, filling and stacking differently treated letters in Photoshop layers like a wedding cake.

 

[jlcharles]

No, unfortunately I don't own Illustrator. I guess I'll have to try it that way. I was hoping there would be something a bit quicker and easier, oh well.

 

[jlcharles]

Forgive the simplicity of the question, but how would one go about outlining the text?

 

[jlcharles]

And here's another question. So, I have a drop shadow on the layer containing the title of my "magazine" and i wanted to see how it looked with an actual picture on it.

I put a sample picture that I have in another layer under the title and i wanted to do what they did with the title on SI, put the player above it, kind of like the title is behind the player, but in front of the background of the picture.

Well, i took the eraser tool and kept shaving away until I was satisfied, but here's the problem, the drop shadow is still there, on top of the player's head. How can I get around this?

 

[CanadaRAM]

Forgive the simplicity of the question, but how would one go about outlining the text?

Layers, it's all in the layers.

Create your basic text - Track it wider than normal (+25) to make room for your outlines.

Duplicate this layer twice, colour the 2nd layer white and the 3rd (lowest) layer black
Hide layer 1 and 2 and go to the 3rd layer

Choose Layer: Layer Style: Stroke: 5 px: Colour - Black

Now unhide the second layer

Choose Layer: Layer Style: Stroke: 3 px: Colour - White

Now unhide the first layer

Now go back to the third layer and add a drop shadow
Choose Layer: Layer Style: Drop Shadow: Spread 100%: Colour - Black, play with the Distance and Size until it fits.

Well, i took the eraser tool and kept shaving away until I was satisfied, but here's the problem, the drop shadow is still there, on top of the player's head. How can I get around this?

Do it the other way. Close-crop around the player's head and put the "head" layer above the text layer.

If that doesn't work for you, then do what you are doing but make two copies of the text in separate layers.

Text
Player
Text2

Only turn on Drop Shadow on Text2, not Text 1

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com

 

[apfhex]

Honestly, looking at the cover of that issue of SI, they didn't do anything with the text that can't be done much more easily with layer effects applied directly to a single live text layer. Drop shadow, inner shadow, stroke, that's it.

 

[CanadaRAM]

Honestly, looking at the cover of that issue of SI, they didn't do anything with the text that can't be done much more easily with layer effects applied directly to a single live text layer. Drop shadow, inner shadow, stroke, that's it.

Yes, you could do it that way, although I find the foreground layer of text to the sharper when it's in its own layer. The Layer Styles have the potential to soften the edges - in this example I'm not happy with the stroke's rounding of the corners. It would be crisper yet if done in Illustrator.

An Inner Shadow would also reduce the weight of the type, so you would have to compensate somehow.

 

[jlcharles]

Great info. I really appreciate the help.

 

[jlcharles]

That worked like a charm. Well, I had to tweak it a bunch to get it to look like what I wanted. Your font must have been a bit different, but regardless. I'm impressed with how it looks. And I tried your suggestion for the head of the player with one of my old pictures and it worked great. I used the blur tool to soften up the edges and it looked great.