Photoshop Elements 14

Report · Oct 01, 2017

White color drop shadow on text does not appear infront of background. The text shows up but not the drop shawdow. How do I make it work?

How do I get a gradient effect on a letter?

Report · Oct 02, 2017

antoinej62243264 wrote
Photoshop Elements 14
White color drop shadow on text does not appear infront of background. The text shows up but not the drop shawdow. How do I make it work?
How do I get a gradient effect on a letter?

You need two layers: the text layer (a vector kind layer) and a normal layer with a gradient above the text layer.

The process is called using a 'clipping mask', the gradient layer does only appear over the letters and is ignored on the surrounding blank spaces. Imagine you add your layer over the text one, and you remove all parts of the gradient except where there is a letter.

You can use the menu Layer >> Create clipping mask (shortcut Alt + Ctrl + G) on the text layer to get the effect. The gradient layer will only appear over the letters and that is shown in the layer palette by the fact that the gradient layer is indented (moved to the right); that means that the effect of the 'grouped' layer (the 'G' in the shortcut) only applies the underlying text layer.

Using 'clipping' mask is another powerful and flexible way to mask unwanted parts of a layer; that works well for text and shapes.

Report · Oct 02, 2017

The reason the White Drop Shadow doesn't show is that the Shadow Layer Style is set to Multiply.

You could make a white drop shadow by doing something like the following.

1. Ctrl or Command click on the Text layer thumbnail in the layers panel.

This load a selection of the text.

2. Make a new blank layer below the text layer and go Edit>Fill Selection>White

3. Select>Deselect

4. Select the Move Tool and using the arrow keys, nudge the white 4 presses to the right and 4 presses down

that's 4 px in both directions in case your wondering how far that is.

5. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and set a value of 5 px.

6. Lower the layers Opacity to 75%

result

You can of course change any of the settings mentioned above to taste.

Below is using the same settings except for replacing white with black and setting the layer blend mode to multiply to make a traditional drop shadow.

The white drop shadow kinda looks weird when compared to a traditional black drop shadow.