[aj32]

Creating 'shiney' text in photoshop (CS3 & CS2)

This tutorial will show you how to create 'shiney' text like shown above

To get started, create a project (size does not matter, just make it big enough to work on, mine was 400px * 200px).

Now, type in some text (e.g. "Dream.in.code"), then right-click the layer icon, and select 'blending options' (as shown below).


On that page, select 'Gradient Overlay'. On that screen, double-click the field next to the text 'Gradient', once done, a window should appear with the pre-set gradients and the area to make your own.
We want to make a gradient with four 'color nodes', these nodes are the ones on the bottom area of the gradient preview bar. when you open the dialog, there should be two nodes already there, to create new ones, click somewhere in the middle of the two (not on the preview). An example of what it should look like is below:



Now, change the color value of the first node to dark blue, and the color of the last node to light blue:


The inner-left node should be changed to a dark blue, yet it should be lighter than the first node, and the inner-right node should be just a little darker than the last node, e.g.



When this is done, close the gradients box, and check 'Outer Glow' and 'Drop Shadow' on the Layer Style box.
After this is done, the resulting image should look like this:



Pretty nice huh? Expirement this using other colors, etc.

I hope this tutorial was useful and thanks for reading!
-AJ32