A Photoshop Tutorial To Make Text Stand Out On Your Ads – Open Book Blog Hop #38

♦Welcome to another edition of the Open Book Blog Hop!♦

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Topic #38

Write a How To or a Tutorial…

A Photoshop Tutorial To Make Text Stand Out On Your Ads 

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If you don’t have PhotoShop from Adobe, you’re really missing out on a tool that you can use to up your marketing game. Marketing is well over half the battle in publishing. It can make and break your platform. I mean that. I hope that you’ll take the time to learn this tiny aspect that can help you stand out.

So what do I mean by making your text stand out on your ads?

This is one of my most recent ads. I created it on Canva.com (a great tool you should familiarize yourself with.)

The graphic is really great and eye catching. Everything is placed in a the appropriate places, and each item fits the scheme, looks professional and really snaps.

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Did you know that color matters?

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The problem that I ran into was making the title across the top and the web address at the bottom stand out. The white line in the middle swallowed the letters, because they were also white. An easy fix, which I don’t always recommend, but it works here because of the repetition of square shapes, is to place a proportioned box, slightly transparent in a complimentary color, behind the text. Canva makes this really easy.

However, Photoshop, can take that to the next level. Let’s get started. Export your photo (save or download) from Canva, or another site that you might be using. Now open it, or just open the photo you built using Photoshop (which is almost as easy to use for this) instead of exporting. This is what it should like (approximately, because I am doing this tutorial on CS6):

As you can see, I have two other dialogue boxes open, one on the left called history and one on the right called layers. These are my go to windows inside of Photoshop. There are a number of them, which you can access under the “Window” menu function. Usually, these are all I need. History allows you to step back and forth on what you have done. Layers let’s you track the layers of your image. Text adds a layers to the base image. All those elements you see in the image, if I had built this in Photoshop, would each have a layer. And, this is cool, because this is where you’re going to go to make them pop out. So what I am about to show you with the text can be applied to all elements, and it makes for an interesting pop effect and framing of each.

To add text, click on the letter in the tool menu on the far left. You see it? It’s the “T.” Now go to the image and ‘draw’ out a box about the size you want the text box to be.

Now click in the dashed box and start typing your text. Make it clever, quick and precise. Change the font, the color. Make it bold or italic, if it fits. Align your text to optimize the look. Click the check if you like what you have, or the crossed out circle to dump it. Repeat for other bits of text. Note: If you want to have multiple colors in your text, you will need to create a text box for each. If the word falls in the middle, estimate enough space so the separate word you’ll be inserting can nestle inside by moving it. The move tool is that arrow head with cross hairs, at the top of the tools section.

Wait! How do I move text?

So, now we have our text placed where we want it. You can see in this image that it stands out pretty well on the blue, but that white bar in the middle is making it tough to see. My web address is just below the Wattpad logo, cut off in this picture, but it’s even worse. The crest of the triangle at least helps the “c” in the first line to stand out a bit.

How to fix it? Right click on the text box layer in the layers box and select “Blending Options…”

That opens this dialogue box…

You can do a lot of different things to make that text stand out. So go ahead and try some different things. At this point, you’re going to need to take it from here. Under some of the options, you’ll find a black and/or white box (see any of the glows, shadows, or embosses). This is where you can change the color tone of the highlight, shadow or embossing. Get creative!

I have some styles I have saved (click new style–just under ‘ok’ and ‘cancel’ on the right, name it and that saves it to your computer for use later, very handy for consistency). To access it again, go through all the steps above, and when you get to this dialogue box, chose ‘styles’ on the top left. You’ll notice there are some presets in there. They’re pretty gross, and I don’t recall ever using them, but they’re there to show you what can be achieved and give you a starting point. If you forget to save something as a new style, no sweat. Open the PSD file (photoshop file), right click on the layer that you want to save the style from, go to blending options, click new style and save it. Now you can follow the same steps to apply it in the new piece you wanted to use it in, and anything else you make then forward.

Here’s how it looks now:

Pretty snazzy without the black bars gumming up the background.

Bonus info: Using blending options is how I achieved the realism in the penannular renderings and other art pieces from The Shadow Soul.

Remember to save your work when you’ve completed the lettering or other finishing touches…

Rename the file here, and make sure to change the format to JPEG, PNG or GIF, depending on your image preferences and needs. Before closing, Photoshop will ask if you want to save changes to the PSD file, that’s all your work, so if you don’t, you can’t make alterations. That would suck!! Yup, you’re going to have two files for the image–your photoshop work file, which you can’t use as an image, and then the image file. It’s not a big deal, but if you name them the same and keep them together they will always be near each other.

Happy Photoshopping!

Let’s see what other How-To’s or Tutorials the other bloggers have come up with…

As you scroll down, please learn more about the wonderful British Author, Stevie Turner…

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Stevie Turner hails from East Anglia, UK, and attributes the countryside of her home with giving her the inspiration to write. She has found her unique voice writing the kind of novels women like to read. To date she has self-published seven books, mainly dealing with the darker side of relationships and always a bit of humor. You can find details of her books on the website:

http://www.stevie-turner-author.co.uk/

Stevie is married, with two sons and three grandchildren.  If she isn’t writing or working, then you’ll find her walking around her pretty country village.

Return to Stevie’s Blog.

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