
Simply adding two whites lines above and below the message gives a better separation between background and text. This is one of the easiest ways to improve contrast. Simply by adding a drop shadow, the contrast is greatly enhanced. The angle should be somewhere close to -144 degrees.

Adjust the Spread to 16% and the Size to 10px. The next step is to add a new layer style and choose a drop shadow. The first step would be to choose an appropriate color for the text.Ĭlearly, in this case, we want a lighter colored font, preferably white. This is an undesired situation because of how difficult it can be to obtain sufficient contrast between the image and the text. In this scenario, we have a client that requested a thin, weak font over a highly-detailed area of photo. The texture of the “Buffalo Wings” font is pushed to much greater prominence and is much more visible. (Keystroke Combination Shift + F5).įinally, set the opacity of the layer to 50% and drag the layer below the text.Īs we can see, the contrast is greatly improved. Pulling color from the man’s shirt, fill the new layer with color. Choose the color selector tool (Keystroke I). The first step is to create a new layer and and rename it to “color-overlay”. There is certainly room for contrast improvement in this image.

The beautiful texture of the “Buffalo Wings” font is completely lost because of how cluttered the background is. There are countless details, especially around the menu area. In order for the user to be able to receive the message being conveyed by the website, legibility is critical.īelow are five ways to improve contrast when placing text over images.Īs we can see in the Before image, the text is fairly difficult to read because of how distracting the background is.

With the recent trend of using high-quality images as backgrounds on websites, it’s important to make sure there is high contrast between the text and the background.
