Foggy glass text

Design techniques, , , , ,
15/12/2009

Have you ever written something on your fogged up bathroom mirror or window? Here’s a web-to-print or dynamic imaging way of doing it.

Dynamic imaging foggy glass text

Before you start

Web-to-print before you start

  • Add a page frame (Layout/Page Setup/Add Page Frame). This will create a rectangular shape with the exact same size as the page size of your template and place it as a bottom layer.
  • Input the dummy text and turn it into a variable web-to-print field.
Hipchick font sample

You’ll need a handwriting font, we used the Hipchick font in this example.

In a nutshell, we’re going to create a blurred, whitened version of the original image with Photoshop and use that as the background image. The original (untempered) image will be PowerClip’d inside the variable text frame giving the illusion that the text is the clear see-through part of the fogged up glass.

In Photoshop

Import your image in Photoshop and go to Filter/Blur/Blur more. Repeat the blur filter many times by pressing Ctrl+F on the keyboard (repeats last used filter).

Web-to-print blurred image

The result should be similar to this.

Now that we have the image blurred, we need to whiten it a bit and make it look foggy.

Photoshop rasterize layer

Draw a white rectangle that covers the entire image and rasterize it (Right click on the layer/ Rasterize Layer).
Photoshop blending mode

Change the blending mode of the layer to Soft Light.

Note. You can whiten the image even more by duplicating the white layer and adjusting its opacity value.

Web-to-print foggy image

The result should be similar to this.

Save the image as a JPEG (Ctrl+Shift+S).

In CorelDRAW

Web-to-print import background image

Import the blurred image in your CorelDRAW template document and place it as the bottom layer.

Dummy text

We have to use an Artistic text frame because Paragraph text frames can’t be PowerClip containers and auto font resizing is not possible for the dummy text.  You can either use the web-to-print Field Editor on the site to limit the max number of characters that a user is allowed to input or you can use the Envelope font resizing trick.

Web-to-print place inside container

Import the original (untempered) version of the image and PowerClip it inside the dummy text frame (Effects/PowerClip/Place Inside Container).

Note. Make sure that the original (PowerClip’d) image and the blurred (background) image are aligned exactly on top of each other.

CorelDRAW No fill

Change the text color to No Fill by pressing the blank (No Fill) box at the top of the color palette.
Web-to-print foggy glass text

The result should be similar to this.

All done!

Our web-to-print software can handle this effect easily! Upload the template into your catalog and test it.

Download the FREE CorelDRAW template file.

See also: