Photoshop Tutorials: Add Transparent Type To An Image
Learn Adobe Photoshop with Photoshop Tutorials at Photoshop Essentials.com
Written By Steve Patterson
In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial, we're going to learn how to add transparent type to an image. There's lots of different ways to make Photoshop type transparent, and in this tutorial, we'll look at a few ways to go about it.
We'll first look at the fastest and easiest way to make text transparent, and then we'll look at a few more interesting ways to create transparent type using layer styles, plus we'll look at the important difference between a layer's "Opacity" and "Fill" options.
This is sort of a combination of a photo effects tutorial and a text effects tutorial, and any recent version of Photoshop will work.
Here's the image I'll be using throughout this Photoshop tutorial:
And here, after we look at the fast and easy way to make text transparent in Photoshop, is the more interesting result we'll be working towards:
Let's get started.
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Step 1: Add Your Text To The Image
Before we can worry about making our Photoshop text transparent, we first need to add it, so let's do that. Select your Type Tool from the Tools palette:
You can also quickly access Photoshop's Type Tool by pressing T on your keyboard. I want white as my Foreground color, so I'll press D on my keyboard, which resets Photoshop's Foreground color to black and its Background color to white, and then I'll press X to swap them, making white my Foreground color.
With your Type Tool selected and white as your Foreground color, go up to the Options Bar at the top of the screen and choose your font. Your choice of fonts will of course depend on which fonts you currently have installed on your system. I'm going to choose Helvetica Black Condensed for my font. You can also set your Font Size in the Options Bar if you wish, but it's often easier to adjust the size after you've added the type using Photoshop's Free Transform command, as I'll be doing in a moment. So for now, I'll go ahead and add my type. I'm going to type the words "SCUBA DIVING" (even though technically, the people in the photo are snorkeling, but I'm sure they'll be going scuba diving later):
Click the checkmark in the Options Bar to accept your type when you're done:
Step 2: Resize And Reposition The Type As Needed With Free Transform
Press Ctrl+T (Win) / Command+T (Mac) to bring up Photoshop's Free Transform box and handles around your text. Move your text into position by clicking anywhere inside the Free Transform box and dragging the text around on the screen (don't click on the little target icon in the center though or you'll move the target, not the image). To resize the text, hold down Shift+Alt (Win) / Shift+Option (Mac) and drag any of the corner handles. Holding "Shift" tells Photoshop to constrain the width and height proportions of the text as you drag so you don't distort the look of it, and holding Alt/Option tells Photoshop to resize the text from the center. I'm going to stretch my text vertically a little as well, so once I've moved it into position and resized it with the corner handles, I'm going to hold down Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) again and click on the top center handle and drag it upward to stretch the text. Once again, holding down Alt/Option stretches the text from its center:
Press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) when you're done to accept the transformation.
With our text added, we'll look at the absolute easiest way of making it transparent next.
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