First off i just want to say that I purposely kept to the basics with this tutorial. For the sake of educating....once people play with it and are comfortable with the basic steps its very easy to start experimenting and vary your results....this was meant to be a tutorial on the general theory without any other complications....have fun.

1) Make dark colored words, background is unimportant.


2) Create new layer, select gradient tool, make sure you are on reflective gradient, and make sure its one of the gradients with the white in the middle and black on the outsides....


3) just off to the right side of the middle of the picture draw a short line near the top of the screen, basically try and duplicate your forward slash but maybe a little longer but not much.


4) At this point you will have your original picture covered by a blackscreen with a white line in it, sittin there goin what the hell this has to be wrong. but its not.


5) Press CTRL-G with your gradient layer selected which should be immediately above your text layer. This makes it so the gradient layer only affects the text not the whole picture.


6) Click File, select edit image in image ready.


7) In image ready select your gradient layer within the layer palette, and position it so the gradient is at the beginning of your word.


8) Create new frame, again select the gradient layer, and this time move it across the word holding shift down so it stays in place, to the end of the word.


9) click the tween button add 15 frames.


10) Hit play tweak the timing as needbe. If it doesnt work delete and start over this time follow directions better.


Something to keep in mind if you are using this to add effects to your sigs or what have you, you must keep in mind certain blending effects on the text will nullify the gradient...im pretty sure mainly color and gradient overlay's are the things that will give you trouble so if its not working check to make sure you didnt use these blending options

Here you can see how i put it to work in a signature, each frame has a .1 second frame delay, except for the last one which i set to 4 seconds to slow the effect down for a more dramatic effect.


This tutorial has been created and brought to you by the Pimps of Pain Design Krew, enjoy!