Creating an Outline Text Shadow Effect in Adobe Photoshop

[KodyWallice]

There are tons of effects you can make up and use on all sorts of things in Adobe Photoshop. Between the idea, the effect itself and the adjustments you can make to it, I’d say the possibilities are endless. When it comes to text effects, I have seen many through the years. Typical stuff really – embossed, outlined, shadows, almost everything. Rarely do I see a drop shadow that’s been converted to an outline though. That’s something new and pretty nice to look at.

In today’s post, I’ll show you the one step that’s needed to convert a regular drop shadow into an outline drop shadow in Adobe Photoshop. If you already know how to apply a drop shadow layer effect to something, this should be very easy to pull off. All you need to do is change the contour and then adjust the distance, spread and size.

The first thing I’ll do is write out some random text on an empty canvas. I’ll use the Horizontal Type Tool to do this. The font I’m using is called Microsoft Tai Le. Here’s the text.



Next, I’ll double-click on the text layer in the Layers panel to open up the Layer Style palette. Once open, I’ll click on the Drop Shadow option.



Inside the Drop Shadow area, I’m going to make a few adjustments. Don’t take it as though these adjustments are etched in stone. You can do anything you’d like to your own text. The most important part is the contour.

I’ll first set the Opacity to 100% and the Blend Mode to Normal. Then, I’ll change the Angle to 130°. Then, I’ll set the Contour to Rolling Slope – Descending.

At this point, my shadow is going to look a bit weird. The reason for this is because I haven’t fine tuned it yet. Let’s take a look at what I’ve got.



If I go ahead and set the Distance to 10, the Spread to 10 and the Size to 3, I think things look a lot better. Here are the settings.



Here’s the final text shadow outline effect.



Pretty cool, right? Let me tell you that this type of effect looks so much different what it’s applied to different fonts. I played around a bit and found some interesting applications. Check these out.



I have to stop because I could sit here all day and mess with these things. I think this is good enough for you to get going though. If you have any questions about how to apply this type of effect to some text in Adobe Photoshop, please let me know in the comment section down below or on the Photoshop forum. Thanks for reading!

 

[KodyWallice]

Cutout or Outline Effect in Photoshop​

Effects that are applied to text can be applied to other objects in Photoshop as well. It’s not like there are “only” text effects and “only,” say, shape effects. These things are pretty interchangeable and work well across the board. And speaking of effects, there are about a million different ones available. It boils down to what you want to see on your canvas. For instance, if you create a certain Drop Shadow effect and change the contour and push the Size slider back and forth, you can make that shadow look like either an emboss or an outline. If you keep that slider in the middle somewhere, the shadow is half and half.

It’s super easy to add a cutout (or outline) effect to something in Photoshop. All you need to do is create your object, whether that be text, a shape or something else, and then double-click on the layer so the Layer Style palette appears. Then, click on the Drop Shadow option. The most important setting to change is in the Quality area. If you click on the Contour drop-down and change the setting from the default to Rolling Slope – Descending, you’ll notice the preview of the shadow change in your work area. Once that’s done, you can alter the Opacity and Blending Mode settings as well as the Angle, Distance, Spread and Size. While most of these settings are critical for basic drop shadow effects, you won’t get the outline unless you change the contour setting. That’s a must.

To see a thorough post on this topic, with screenshots and all, please click through below.

Creating an Outline Text Shadow Effect in Adobe Photoshop