shadowing text help

Shadow text.

 

If you're concerned about pages looking too flat, you can add shadow to text.

 

Obviously, don't overdo this - sometimes less is more - but it can be used to make a page, and certainly a headline, more aesthetically appealing.

 

I've done a step-by-step guide for those of you who want to experiment...

 

 

 

Create or open a document and select some text, in this case, it's The Bike Hugger Mobile Social.

2. Open The Inspector

Click the Inspector button or View>Show Inspector (or press Option-Command-I).

3. Switch to the Graphic Inspector

You’d think that the trick would be to bring up the Text Inspectorin the Inspector but really you want to bring up the Graphic Inspector as that’s where the tools are for stroke, shadow and opacity. Pages considers a bit of text with an effect to be just like a graphic element.

4. Control Your Shadow

Click the Shadow box and change any of the settings you want to get your desired effect. The first box controls the color (black usually works best, who has ever seen a shadow that’s not black?), while Angle controls the angle of the “light” that makes the shadow (you can use the circular tool or enter a number in the numeric field to the right). Offset controls how far from the original text the shadow lies, while Bluris the amount of blurring applied to the effect, and Opacity is the degree to which one can see through the shadow.

5. View Your Effect

Close the Inspector and view your effect.