Danez Smith, “It Began Right Here”
idk how to explain, but how do you make gradient text but in reverse colors with exclusion effect?
You explained it fine! I’m going off the assumption that you mean something like these:
I actually go for Difference instead of Exclusion. They do very, very similar things, so much so that I’d go so far as to say they’re near-identical, but if you play around with blending modes enough and compare those two in particular, you’ll find that Exclusion produces a lower contrast than Difference. But we’ll be working with white base text here—they’re actually-identical where white is concerned—so you’re welcome to pick whichever.
Once you have your font/s picked out and know where you want to place your text, set it to Difference (or Exclusion) so that it looks something like this:
From there, it’s pretty much verbatim what I talked about in my original gradient text tutorial. We’re still going to double click on our text layer, then click on the Gradient Overlay tab of the Layer Style window that pops up, keeping in mind that we should pick colors that complement the gif and/or the overall set.
The only difference here is that we’ll also be playing around with the blending mode of the Gradient Overlay. The blending modes I tend to stick with are Linear Burn, Color Burn, Multiply, and Hard Light, but I’ve used Vivid Light and Linear Light as well.
This was my final product after setting my gradient to Multiply:
What blending mode you use is up to you, yes, but it ultimately depends on the background behind your text. Because of how both Difference and Exclusion work, some areas of your text can be harder to read, gradient or no. I recommend having your Layer Style window just a little to the side of your gif so that you can see for yourself what the different options (and colors, too!) look like as you scroll through them.
As an example: I didn’t like how light the middle of my text looked here, so I ended up deciding on a darker green for my gradient.
“One hand caressed his cheek, the other drew
The weapon softly — “I love you, love you,”
I whispered, “love you as my life.”
And — buried in his back his scalping knife.”
(via megairea)
“
I loved you
the whole time you were here
and the whole time
you were gone