To make our typography even scar

Get paid for commercial fashion, magazine & product advertising design?!? Yes you! Learn the skills of Madison Avenue Advertising Designers here. (opens in new window)

PSDer: It's always free.

3 Free iPSD designs.

Click here to read the Anti-Spam Policy.

Over 5500 Members & growing

To make our typography even scarier we’re now going to do such things as rotating or skewing some of the letters to make them purposely look ‘off’ and like a madman is hiding beneath the background layer.

You can select a portion of any layer (once it is selected in the layers palette) and then free transform (Ctrl T) to adjust that specific selection on that layer.

Choose this brush or one that is quite bristly. This is another way to add to the text effect or to recreate a similar version of the Hollywood spattered spooky text.

Because you have rasterized these layers they share the same opportunities as all normal layers (except being text editable within the text editing field). So go ahead and create a layer mask by clicking on the appropriate icon in the layers palette (box with a circle in it). With your ‘B’rush and a foreground color of black or dark grey, go ahead and carefully blot certain areas of the layer that you have masked on. Make sure that you are masking on top of the area where there is pixels on the layer you’ve chosen.or you won’t see your masking.

Here you can see the rubylith which shows you the results of the masking job. Layer masking is covered in depth in my Basic Photoshop Training program because I believe it is one of the most important things to master as a graphic designer (next to layers of course but that's easy).

When you make a selection, even if the layers are linked, the moVe is only going to apply to the layer that you are on. Grab the rectangular ‘M’arquee tool and (first select a layer in the layers palette) put a selection around a letter that you want to alter. Here I’ve chosen the “L” of last and the ‘MER’ of summer.

You want to make these look off so after you have selected the specific letters you can go ahead and use the move tool to move them (nudge them in the direction you want to go with the arrow keys). Remember that we have the difference layer above this layer so see how it looks if you like it otherwise you may have to do the same actions on the difference layer to make them line up perfectly again.

Keep choosing some letters that you think should look ‘oddball’ and find that layer in the layers palette. Use the rectangular marquee to make a selection around the letter and use the moVe tool to nudge or the Ctrl T to free transform or rotate it. You’ll want to make the movements pretty subtle but still obvious. A subtle and impending doom...

Also note that the selection will ‘snap’ around the letter after the first nudge; this is meant to close in on the actual existing pixels and it’s just really cool.

Go back to the ‘MER’ and lets tilt that as such with the Transform rotate tool (Ctrl T and keep the cursor outside of the boundary box).

Now you can pull in your lead actor or actress. Here is an acquaintance of mine, Amanda. Use the layer mask method to get rid of the sharp edges. Sharp edges here = a no no. Grasshoppa want smooth blend like Kentucky sippin'. Get some cool free downloads @ psdownloads here.