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Paint Shop Pro Tutorials -- Drop Shadow Text Tutorial

Creating Drop Shadow Text with Paint Shop Pro

This tutorial will show you how to make text stand out (i.e. shadowed text) using Paint Shop Pro.

Okay, let's get started. First open a new file and give it 300 as the width and 150 as the height. Also make sure you use 16.7 million as the color depth. This is so that we can use the softening effect later.

I'm using white as the background color for clarity but you should choose something that's close to the color you'll be setting this graphic against. Now, on the select window double click on the forground color square.

figure 2.1

It's the black square in the diagram above (figure 2.1). The white square behind the black one shows the current background color. Double-clicking will bring up the "color" window.

Choose a medium grey color. This is what we'll use for the shadow.

Now select the text tool from the paint window. It looks like this...

figure 2.2

Position the cursor on the graphic and click the left mouse button. This will bring up the font window. Choose whatever font and size you like. I used BRUSH SCRIPT Mt at 48. Make sure that Anti Alias and Shadow are NOT selected. Type your text into the bottom window and press return. Position the text where you want it and click the left mouse button. You should have something similar to this...

figure 2.3

Now, choose "IMAGE" >> "NORMAL FILTERS" select "SOFTEN MORE" . I did this twice to get a softer shadow but you may choose to do it only once or even more than twice. (Play around with it a little to see the different effects).

Your graphic should look like this now...

figure 2.4

By double-clicking on the foreground color square you can select the color you want for the text. Select the text icon again and click the mouse somewhere on your graphic. At this point I chose to include anti aliasing to soften the edges on the text itself. Now you should just be able to press enter as the text remains the same. Position the final text a little above and to the left of the "shadowed" text. Your graphic should resemble this one...

figure 2.5

At this point you should save the graphic. You'll want to save it as a GIF file. To do this you'll first need to decrease the color depth (remember this graphic started out at 16.7 million colors). From the menu choose "COLORS" then choose "DECREASE COLOR DEPTH". Finally, choose "256 COLORS". On the dialog box that pops up choose "OK". You're now ready to save your shadowed text. From the "FILE" menu choose "SAVE AS" and select GIF as the image type. This will make your new graphic Web-ready!

TIP: Save this graphic with a transparent background. You'll need to save as a GIF89a file. You'll find the transparent background option under options on the file (save as) dialog box.

And remember,

figure 2.6

That's it.... Be sure to check out some of our other Paint Shop Pro tutorials.

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