Hello everyone! I’m dropping in today with a quick tip for integrating text with painted elements. Have you ever found the perfect word art element and wanted to use it on top of a painted background? Take a look at this layout and the word art in the bottom right corner of the page:
Notice that the left side of the first couple of lines looks like it was actually written over the pink paint. This is a super easy look to achieve in Photoshop or PSE with just a couple of blending mode adjustments.
Let’s start with a comparison of the before and after looks:
Notice how the blended version has a more artistic effect? The writing appears as if it was integrated with the paint, not just sitting on top of it. It was “oh so easy” too with the blending modes in Photoshop and PSE.
First, clip the word art to the paint element (shortcut Ctrl>Alt>G) so that only that part is effected by blending mode adjustments. Now you need to play with different blending modes to see which ones work with your elements and colors. Also, don’t be afraid to layer different effects. I used three different text layers with different blending modes and opacity levels. As you can see from the layers palette below, the first layer was set to Overlay at 100%, the second to Overlay at 20% and the third to Soft Light at 51%.
Layer modes are found in the drop down menu at the top of the layers palette.
Once you have the text blended into the paint, make a copy of the word art or text and place it under the paint element in the layers palette to make the rest of it appear on the page. This is how my layers are arranged in the layers palette:
And that is all there is to it! I hope you find this technique useful the next time you combine word art/text with digital paint. Be sure to share your favorite blending mode recipes with us either in the comments below, or in your Lilypad Gallery credits. :)
Until next time ~
Judie (HeyJude)
Leave a Reply