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ADD A DOUBLE-NEON GLOW to text for a unique design You can easily give any text a double-neon glow effect using a variation of a technique taught by Colin Smith of PhotoshopCAFÉ. Colin is an award-winning Photoshop and Flash designer and teaches the new media through his instructional videos called the Photoshop Secrets video training series. He also writes the CAFÉ cup, a free subscription newsletter, and runs the PhotoshopCAFE.com Web site, a powerful resource for Photoshop-related news. The double-neon glow can be very effective for creating album or Web page titles. Set against a dark
background, the glowing letters quickly capture your viewer’s attention. You can easily change the way the letters glow on the screen by changing the background layer color or adding a gradient background. The double-glow effect surrounding the letters can be varied anytime and changed by simply double-clicking the effect button in the Layers panel to reopen the Layer Style dialog box. By keeping the text as a type layer, you can edit the text and maintain the glow, so you can use the double-glow technique for multiple applications.
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1 Open a new blank document. 2 Click the Type tool. 3 Select the font family, style, and size in the Options bar.
4 Click in the image and type your 4
text.
5 Click the commit button to commit the type.
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6 Click the Layer Style button. 7 Click Outer Glow. 7 6 The Layer Style dialog box appears.
8 Click and drag to increase the spread slider to about 13%, which is just over 1/8 the text size.
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Note: You can reopen any layer style by double-clicking on its name in the layers panel later to readjust the amounts if necessary.
9 Click and drag to increase the size to about 15 pixels or 1/8 the text.
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0 Click Drop Shadow ( to
).
changes