Infinite Alchemy - www.infinitealchemy.com

CRACKED TEXT

Well, for those of you who are having trouble thinking about what you should do with your text on your graphics, here's a trick for you.
1.) Let's keep it simple and choose a font you like. For this trick, you may want to choose a font that has cuts and such on it already. There's nothing wrong with using other text, I just feel this effect works best with something to enhance it's job as a text effect. The font I chose a called, "Ringbearer."

2.) What you want to do first is make sure the font layer in your layers pallette can be edited like a regular layer. Go to your layers pallette, select your font layer and right-click so that you'll get a menu. Select "Rasterize Layer..." from the menu. This will allow you to manipulate the font layer by any means you desire to do.

3.) Select the "lasso" tool from the tool bar. Make sure it's the free hand lasso tool and not the "polygonal" or "magnetic" lasso tools. (Click and hold down until a menu pops up and select the first lasso tool on the menu. It'll be the free-hand one.)

4.) With the font layer selected and the lasso tool selected, free hand a circle around the top half of the text (it doesn't have to be perfect. Actually, the sloppier, the better).

5.) Hit Ctrl+X to cut the top half off of the text.

6.) Hit Ctrl+V to paste the top half back onto the graphic. This will appear on a new layer. Position that layer above the bottom half of the text. Don't do it perfectly, otherwise it'll defeat the purpose of this tutorial. Position it so that there's a small gap between the top and bottom halves... offset them if you have to. Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to nudge them around as to how you see fit.

7.) To enhance this effect more, let's put a stroke on it. Click on the layer effect menu on your layer pallette. It'll be the first button on the bottom of the pallette. A menu will appear. Select the "stroke" effect. An option menu will appear.

8.) Utilize the settings according to the photo below. You don't have have to use white. You can use other colors if you'd like. For the sake of this tutorial, I used white.

9.) Click Ok. Then you're done!

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