Making Glows
This tutorial will show you how easy it is to make text and images with an animated glowing effect, like the image above. Before we get started, please note that this tutorial was made using Paint Shop Pro 8, but will work just about the same with psp 7, 9 or 10 if you're running one of those versions. You will need Animation Gallery, however. You can get either of these programs from Corel by clicking here.
Step 1 - Pick Your FontOne of the key ingredients to a good looking text animation is to make the font unique, and to make it match the text you're planning on using. It doesn't make much sense to use heartland font to make an animation that says "simply evil", now does it? To choose from a wide range of fonts, visit FontFreak. Once you've decided on your font, continue to step 2.
Step 2 - Picking Your Base ColorAfter you've chosen your font, you need to select your colors. You have two decisions to make, what the text color will be and what color the glow around the text will be. For this tutorial, I'll be using #4A638C (dark blue) and #AAC0E7 (light blue). Set your background color to whatever color you want the text to be. I've set mine to the dark blue color.
Step 3 - Open Your New ImageOpen a new image, 400 wide by 225 high. For glowing texts, you can't have a transparent background, so you'll need to choose what color background you want the text on. Because the background of this page is black, I can use a black background and get away with it without anyone knowing any different, so choose a background color that most closely matches that of the page the glow will be added onto.
Step 4 - Adding Your TextOn your new image, type the text that you want. Don't worry about excess space, we'll be cropping this down in animation shop after we add the glow technique. Here's what I have so far. You'll notice that I haven't deseclected the font yet, don't do it to yours either!
Step 5 - Adding Glow - First Step With your text still selected, go to effects/3D effects/drop shadow, and have your settings like I do below.
The only change you should make is to your actual glow color, set that to whatever you want the glow around your text to be. Apply this step. Now go to the same section in effects, and bring up the same menu, but change the horizontal and vertical values to -1, and apply again. Again, bring up the drop shadow menu, and change the horizontal to 1 and keep the vertical at -1, apply. Again, bring up the drop shadow menu, and change the horizontal to -1 and the vertical to 1. Apply.
Basically, you want to add 4 shadow sections to your text. The four steps should have been set at:
1. Vertical at 1, horizontal at 1.
2. Vertical at -1, horizontal at -1.
3. Vertical at -1, horizontal at 1.
4. Vertical at 1, horizontal at -1.
Now you've added a 1 pixel shadow to all angles of your image, leaving you with something like this:
Right click on the image and select "copy merged", then in Animation Gallery, right click on the work surface and select "paste as new animation".
Step 6 - Adding Glow - Second Step Back in paint shop, undo the 4 drop shadow additions so you're left with your plain text again. Now, bring up the drop shadow menu again, but follow these 4 steps instead.
1. Vertical at 2, horizontal at 2.
2. Vertical at -2, horizontal at -2.
3. Vertical at -2, horizontal at 2.
4. Vertical at 2, horizontal at -2.
Now you're left with an image like this:
Copy the image from paint shop and move over to animation gallery, right click on your first frame of the glow and select "paste image after current frame". Now your animation has 2 frames.
Step 6 - Adding Glow - Third Step Back in paint shop, undo the 4 drop shadow additions so you're left with your plain text again. Now, bring up the drop shadow menu again, but follow these 4 steps instead.
1. Vertical at 3, horizontal at 3.
2. Vertical at -3, horizontal at -3.
3. Vertical at -3, horizontal at 3.
4. Vertical at 3, horizontal at -3.
Now you're left with an image like this:
Copy the image from paint shop and move over to animation gallery, right click on the second frame of the glow and select "paste image after current frame". Now your animation has 3 frames.
Step 7 - Cropping The Image Now you have 3 frames sitting in animation shop, but with a bunch of excess space around them. Select the crop tool in animation shop and on frame 3, where the glow is the largest, crop the image down to size. You'll notice when you crop one frame in an animation, all frames follow suite. Now you should have something like this:
Step 8 - Animating Now you that you have an ascending pattern to your glow, you have to make it descend as well, meaning, your glow isn't even yet. Right click on frame 2 and select "copy". Then select frame 3, and right click, select "paste image after current frame". Now your animation has 4 frames, and will appear even when it animates.
In the menu under "animation", select "frame properties". You want each frame at about 10 for frame properties.
Step 9 - Save That's it! Save your image and you're done! Next time, experiment with different fonts, colors and frame properties for different effects! You can also use this same method to add a glow effect to images.
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