Step 1: For the sake of taking screenshots that aren’t 1MB each, I’m going to work on a 640×480 image, but you can make this a fullsize wallpaper if you wanted to. I’m also going to go with a background color that is a bit dark, but very rich… I decided to go with a dark blue RGB code 0, 51, 153.

Step 2: Choose your text! Write out the text you want to apply this effect to in white… I personally think the effect looks better in thicker letters, so for the sake of this tutorial, I’m going to pic a super thick font like Futura Extra Black and we’ll go with the words “PIXEL2LIFE”.

Step 3: Time for our first major step… we’re going to create the text effect that will give us the clean gradient look we want. I really like the sheen of the text this technique produces, but you can mess around with any kind of text style you want. Start off by creating a copy of the text object by doing a copy/paste (hit Ctrl-C then Ctrl-V):

Now open the Brightness/Contrast/Intensity tool by clicking on Image > Adjust > Brightness/Contrast Intensity and darken the text up a bit by moving the brightness slider to the left a bit:

Now hit 1 to bring up the Interactive Object Transparency Tool and going from bottom to top, fade the darkened text upwards. Once you’ve established the desired fade, apply it. If you don’t know how to use this tool, please refer to Step 7 of this tutorial I wrote last year. It explains how to use it in detail.

Once you have that gradient done, click on the original text object (The one that is still white) and use the Interactive Object Transparency Tool to create a gradient fade on the text going from top to bottom this time.

Click on the original text object:

Create the gradient:

Now highlight both text objects and combine them into a single object. Your text object is now done and ready for some tweaking!

Please continue to the Next Page.