Adobe Photoshop: How To Create Comic Book Text
This Photoshop tutorial is going to show you how to create a text effect which makes it look like it has come straight from a comic book. If you’d like to learn more about Photoshop, our training courses cover these techniques and more.
Illustrator can also be used for creating these types of images. In this tutorial, we are going to look at creating it in Photoshop . The techniques discussed below are covered during our course for Photoshop beginners.
The first thing you are going to want to do is to create a new page it can any size you like and any colour. Then we are going to want to apply a gradient with whatever colours you have chosen for your background. I have chosen green and to add a gradient you need to double click the layer and open the blending options then go down to gradient overlay and then choose your background colour and then a colour which is a few shades darker this will give it a nice soft gradient.
Next still in the blending options window you need to go to pattern overlay and use the same pattern I have it will be the last in the list and apply a soft light blend mode.
Next, we are going to add a half tone pattern to it we are going to use the half-tone brushes that we downloaded at the start this tutorial. Select the one you like the most and make sure that the size is big enough to cover most of the page leaving some parts around the edges. You can choose any colour you like but I would suggest ether black or a darker shade of the colour you have this way you can lower the opacity and then that way you can have it blend in together nicely.
Next, you are going to want to grab your pen tool and draw a random shape. This will be behind the text so you want something that’s eye-catching.
Next, you want to turn the random shape in Photoshop into a selection. To do this you can right-click the outline of the shape and go down to selection. We have done this because after you have made it a selection you can edit it within the layer styles menu.
Next, you are going to want to change the colour of the shape using the colour overlay section. I have chosen red because it is a nice bright colour stands out on top of the green and will grab the reader’s attention. Next, you are going to want to add a drop shadow to the shape, you can use the same settings I have used below but you probably have a different shape to me so you might need to tweak some settings.
Now you should have something which looks like this but it still looks a bit plain so we need to add some more detail.
To do this we are going to use a halftone brush that you downloaded at the start of this Photoshop tutorial and then select the shape and then use the brush on it. You also want to select a darker tone of red then the shapes red. And you should have something like below.
Next you want to copy the shape and paste the new one behind the original one. You then want to change the colour to black you can use the same method we used to change it to red. You then want to make it slightly bigger than the original so that it makes a black outline round it.
This next part is most important part and that’s the text that goes over our shape. The first you want to do is to type out the word you want to use I’m using the word KAPOW like a classic Batman comic would. You should type out each letter separately so that they can be moved about and edited separately. Once you have written out you word you will need to copy it and paste it under the original. You then what to move it slightly to the side and you may need more the one copy to make this work but you want to eventually have it look like the image below after some editing.
Now you want to select the original letter and you then want to apply these settings which I have applied below you can then save these settings as a style and then you could quickly select it and it will make this effect for you.
Now if you copied all those settings your letter should look something like this but without the orange dots on the letter. To get these dots we are going to use a half-tone brush again and just use it to add some shading to the letters. At this stage, you can group or merge the same letters together so they are just one letter.
Next we want to add a stroke to our letters so you want to select the letter then go into the layer styles and down to stroke then you change these settings to how you like them.
That will leave you with something like this I quickly added some highlights to it and to do that I grabbed a transparent white brush then slowly painted on to the letters creating this highlight effect.
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