Create a faded stretched text in Photoshop

Published on August 9, 2022

Create a faded stretched text

In this blog I’ll show you how to create a faded stretched text effect in Adobe Photoshop.

Rather watch the video with instructions? Click here or scroll down to the end of this page.

Step 1: Create file and text

Create a new file. It doesn’t matter what size your file is. Also pick a background color while creating the new file.

Then select the horizontal type tool and pick a font and text color. Type your text.

When your text is done, select the move tool and press CTRL+T to activate free transform. You can now resize the text and adjust the placement. Leave enough space below the text to stretch it.

Step 2: Select text

Right click on the text layer and select ‘rasterize type‘.

Make sure you’ve selected the text layer. Then select the rectangular marquee tool and select the bottom part of your text.

When you’ve selected the bottom part of the text, press CTRL+J to duplicate the selected area. You now have a new layer with only the bottom part of the text (layer 1).

Step 3: Stretched text effect

Select layer 1 (the layer with only the bottom part of the text). Then select the move tool and again press CTRL+T to activate free transform.

Press and hold CTRL and drag the bottom part of the selection down to stretch the text. Make sure you drag it straight down, the amount of degrees should stay at 0,0.

Make sure you’ve selected layer 1 (the layer with the stretched text). Then navigate to ‘Filter > Blur > Motion blur‘.

The angle should be 90 degrees and the distance 2000 pixels. As you can see, the stretched text now turned into faded lines.

Click OK to apply the adjustments. Then add a mask to layer 1 (the layer with the faded lines).

Select the brush tool, make the foreground color black and the opacity 100%. Make sure the layer mask is selected and brush over the lines above your text to remove them.

If you brush over an area that did not needed to be removed, change the foreground color to white and brush over it again. The line will then reappear.