Scrolling Highlight Bar Effect

This tutorial will show you how to make a scrolling highlight bar over text in Photoshop CS2 and Imageready like the one shown below.



First start with your desired background, if this is made up of multiple layers, merge them all into 1 layer. Make a duplicate copy of your background layer by right clicking on the layer in the navigator panel and choosing "Duplicate Layer..." Here's the background I used.



Now add the text you want, in the position you want it. Here's what I used.



On the text layer, use the polygon lasso tool to make the shape for the highlighting bar. I used a 45 degree slash, make the thickness of the bar about the same as one of the vertical elements of your text. i.e. About the same thickness as a lowercase "L" would be in your text. Go to the "Select" menu and use the "Feather" option to feather your selection by 2 pixels. Now create a "Brightness/Contrast" layer and set the brightness to 100%. You should end up with a feathered bright bar sitting on top of your text as shown below.



Now arrange your layers as shown below.



With your text layer selected, use the magic wand with "Anti-alias" turned on and "Contiguous" turned off to select an empty section of the layer, then go the "Select" menu and use the "Inverse" option. Your screen should look something like shown below. If you have used a "stroke" on the outside of your text like I have, you will need to go the "Select" menu and choose the "Expand..." option to expand the selection by the size of your "stroke". In my case I expanded the selection by 1 pixel because I used a 1 pixel outside stroke.



Now select the "Background copy" layer in the navigator and press "Delete". Your text will now be visible. Make the "Background Copy" layer invisible and then select the "Highlight Bar" layer. Move the highlight bar across your text until it sits just to the left of your text as shown below.



Now make the "Background copy" layer visible again and the bar will be hidden behind this layer. If you are using Photoshop CS2, make sure the "Animation" palette is displayed by going to the "Window" menu and choosing "Animation". If you are not using CS2 but have "Image Ready", in Photoshop go to the "File" menu and choose the "Edit in Imageready" option. Once again, make sure the "Animation" palette is displayed by using the "Window" menu. Add a new frame to the animation by clicking on the "Duplicate Frame" button in the "Animation" palette as shown below.



With frame 2 selected in the "Animation" palette, make the "Background copy" layer invisible again and then select the "Highlight Bar" layer. Now move the highlight bar across your text to the other end so it sits just off to the right of your text as shown below.



Make the "Background copy" layer visible again and use the "Tween" button in the "Animation" palette, (as shown below) to insert frames into the animation.



Use the settings shown below for your tweening, if you have not many letters in your text or your text is small, you may want to reduce the number of frames inserted.



To put a delay in the animation, select the last frame of the animation in the "Animation" palette and set the delay to 5 seconds. This will make the animation pause for 5 seconds between loops. If you are using Photoshop CS2, use "Save for web" in the "File" menu to save your animation. If you are using Imageready, use "Save optimized as..." in the "File" menu to save your animation. Here is the end result again, enjoy!

Wow, i was expecting the gradient tool to come to play here. But, nice alternative. Maybe this is the better way of doing it. Good job.

Thanks. I have seen a tutorial for something similar that uses the gradient tool, but for some reason I couldn't get it to work properly for me. Therefore, I came up with my own way of doing it.

So Good Tutorial ..!! Congratulations..

I would have normally passed this off as another remake tutorial, but it uses a different method from gradient, so kudos for that.

very interesting.

i wonder if i hav skill like u wat can i do others than this.

mayb animation director? Cool ya
[note=jlhaslip]Edit to fix bbcodes. The bbcode tags MUST be closed, or they don't work[/note].

wow. very nice tutorial. unfortunately i have the attention span of a squirrel. therefore i don't want to take the time to read it. though i like it because, like everyone else said, you didn't just do it the simple way with the gradient tool.

Thanks for the tut, will try this one out another time.

interesting concept, but yeah the original gradient uses a bunch of ctrl+ (whatever goes here) that have to be follow precisly, basically you have to make sure you don't do anything more with the background or text before doing this or you have to do alot of back-stepping to get it done right.

oh I love it looks so shimmering I've been wondering how you did this, thanks for the tutorial