This effect is very easy to create and believe that results obtained from a sufficiently attractive, the program will work with Gimp, remember that it is free and available for almost all systems (Windows, Linux and MacOS). Following this guide get a text that has a white shade above, as if bored.

Difficulty: Basic / easy. If you can click the right mouse button you can follow this tutorial.

Time Required: Less than 5 minutes. 4 minutes you'll be thinking about the font you want to use.

Creation process;

  1. Create the image with the desired size: File menu -> New (CTRL + N)
  2. Color black and white text.
  3. Add text to a size considerably if we see the effect better with a font that is sufficiently thick, or with bold style.
  4. Duplicate the layer with the text.
  5. Create a new transparent layer (using the image size) over the duplicate text.
  6. Right click on the transparent layer and select Merge Down.
  7. Select the text with the color selection tool, and cut the selected part.
  8. Right click and select menu -> invert (CTRL + I), fill the new selection with black (CTRL + O).
  9. Discard the selection, that is, remove all selections.
  10. Duplicate the layer with black text inverted.
  11. Select the original layer with the text upside down, right, filter -> blurring / Blur -> Gaussian
  12. Depending on the size of the text we can more or less value, the higher the gradient reaches farther.
  13. And we have our text with a perforated shade inside.

NOTE: Remember to save the file in *. Xcf to maintain layers and properties of each element separately. You can then save a copy in the format that you feel (jpg, png ...).

I created a video (screencast) with the entire process of creating this effect;


Screencast shadow effect with Gimp

You can see an example in the form of wallpaper (wallpaper) on my DeviantArt account .