Another cool technique which might be usefull when trying to achieve some dark and mystical Sci-Fi effect in your web-to-print template. This involves the help of both Photoshop and CorelDRAW.

This technique was inspired by the Slick Supernatural Text Effect Photoshop tutorial.

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 paper 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.

/

In a nutshell, we will use the “text inside text” approach PowerClip to achieve a 3D text look with multiple light sources and place it on top of a cool night sky background made in Photoshop.

Creating the background in Photoshop

Create a new document in Adobe Photoshop with the same page size as in your CorelDRAW template file and flood it with black color by drawing a black rectangular that covers the entire document.

Fog

/

Click on the color icons in the bottom of the toolbox and set the Foreground and Background colors. We used a light blue color #80d0d8 for the foreground and black for the background.

/

/

/

Create a new layer, go to Filter/Render/Clouds and change the layer blending mode to Overlay. The result should be similar to this.

Note. Make them stronger by duplicating the layer (Ctrl+J).

/

Lets concentrate the clouds in the middle of the picture.

/

Select the clouds layer and click on the Edit in Quck Mask Mode icon at the bottom of the toolbox.

/

/

Add a Radial black&white gradient in the center. The result should be similar to this, don’t worry about the red gradient since that is how gradients should appear in the Quick mask mode.

/

/

/

Leave the Quck mask mode by clicking on the same icon and you should see a selection formed, press Delete. The result should be similar to this.

/

Stars

/

/

/

Flood the document with another black rectangle as a new layer and go to Filter/Noise/Add Noise. Use these settings as reference.

Reduce the noise (number of stars) by presing Ctr+L to open the Levels window and adjust the Input and Output Level sliders ’till you end up with the desired number of stars.

/

/

/

/

/

/

/

Change the blending mode of the layer to Lighter Color. The result should be similar to this.

Note. Make the stars stronger by encreasing the Brightness level of the layer (Image/Adjustments/Brightness/Contrast).

/

Activate the Eraser tool, set it at the softest level and delete the stars that are above the thickest parts of the cloud as well as some of the others to make them look more random.

/

/

As a final touch for this step, lets use the same Quick Mask mode gradient trick, that we used on the clouds, to delete the stars in the corners. The result should be similar to this.

/

/

Smoke

/

Create a new blank layer and with the foreground color still set to #80d0d8 draw some random shape (Ex. a circle) in the middle of the page with a soft brush.

/

/

Go to Filter/Distort/Wave, use these settings (click Randomize before you click OK).

/

/

/

/

//

/

/

/

/

/

/

/

/

/

/

/

Click Ctrl+F (Repeat last filter) multiple times till your shape looks similar to this.

Set the blending mode of the layer to Overlay. (Note. Duplicate layers when you want them to appear stronger).

You can use the Eraser tool (set it at the softest level) to delete parts of the smoke string if you don’t want it to stretch throughout the entire background verticaly.

/

/

/

/

Repeat this step to make more smoke shapes. We’ll need two sets of them. One that will go with the background and one set that we’ll save as a transparent .tiff file containing only the smoke.

/

/

/

We’ll use the second one to put the smoke on top of the text in the CorelDRAW template, making those smoke shapes appear like they are in front of the letters. Turn off the visibility to the second set for now.

/

/

As a final touch, let’s make the background look a bit toxic by adding a greenish color overlay in the top of it. To do this we need to create a new layer and use the Gradient Tool (G) to add a Foreground to Transparent gradient from the top. We used color #ad4db81 as the foreground color.

/

/

/

/

Change the blending mode of the layer to Multiply. The result should be similar to this.

The background of our template ready, save it as a image file. Download the PSD file we ended up with.

/

One more thing to do in Photoshop before we leave and that is the transparent .tiff smoke image that will go in front of the text in our template.

Turn off the visibility to the stars and clouds layers as well as the smoke string set that you used in the background and turn on the the visibility of the second smoke string set.

The greenish gradient and black background have to stay since they are involved in the blending appearance of the smoke strings. Merge them all (Shift+Ctrl+E).

/

Go to Select/Color Range and click on the black background so that you select everything but the smoke strings. We used Fuzziness level 100. Press Delete to remove all the black from your image and save it as a TIFF file with the Transparency information.

Template preparation

Import the backround image you’ve just made into your Corel template document and place it the bottom layer.

Dummy Text

The font we used in this example is CType.

Duplicate the dummy text frame to end up with 5 copies of it.

We will use a separate copy for:

• A bottom text frame for the outer glow of the dummy text,
• A lighter color text frame with a glow which will be slightly higher than the original text to achieve a top-glow illusion,
• A background text frame to fill in the PowerClip transparency and
• A transparent PowerClip text frame with another contoured one inside it.

Lets start from the bottom one and work our way up.

Outer glow

Select the bottom text frame and assign a drop shadow to it with the folowing settings.

Top glow

Select the next text frame and assign the greenish color that we used in the background (C:15; M:0; Y:62; K:0;).

Activate the drop shadow tool, click and drag upwards on the text frame. Use these shadow settings as reference.

Note. Use the same color for the drop shadow as you used for the text it self.

After you’re done, move the text frame slightly higher than its current position since we’ll use it as a top-glow and only the tops of the letters will be visible.

/

The result should be similar to this.

/

/

PowerClip

Place one copy inside the original dummy text as a PowerClip (Effects/PowerClip/Place Inside Container).

Go inside the PowerClip (Right click/Edit Content), select the dummy text inside it and change its color to the same blue color we used in the background (C:47; M:0; Y:16; K:0;).

Activate CorelDRAW’s contour tool from the toolbox menu on the left and use the following settings.

/

/

Move the dumy text frame up till the center contour color touches the frame of the PowerClip.

/

/
Leave the PowerClip (Right click / Finish Editing This Level) and set the PowerClip container dummy text color to No Fill.

/

The result should be similar to this.

Smoke on top

As a final touch, place the transparent smoke strings image on top of all objects, activate CorelDRAW’s Transparency Tool and ad a Uniform transparency to it with the Add option as the Transparency Operation.

/

/

/

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.

//

/

Try this web-to-print template.

/

Download the FREE CorelDRAW template file.

/

/

/