Jana Zemke
By Jana Zemke Last updated on Shown in: Adobe Photoshop CS5
Animated glitter text

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An animated glitter text gives your designs a glamorous and dynamic look - perfect for social media posts, invitations, or digital artworks. With Photoshop, you can easily create this effect by combining layer styles, glitter effects, and timeline animation. In this tutorial, I will show you step by step how to create a sparkling glitter text and make it shine through animation. Let's get started and put your text in motion!

1. New Document

We start by creating a new document with the dimensions 574 px x 319 px.

Animated glitter text

Then we use the Gradient Tool to fill the background with colors #29108c to #152869.

1. New Document – image 2

We drag the gradient from the top left to the bottom right.

1. New Document – image 3

2. Create Text and Add Glitter Effect

We select a font and write the text. Here I used "Franklin Gothic Heavy" in 235 px size and color #8e5ade.

2. Create Text and Add Glitter Effect – image 4

We duplicate the layers by pressing Ctrl+J 2 times. Now we have 3 identical layers.

2. Create Text and Add Glitter Effect – image 5

For the first glitter effect, we add noise to the first layer under Filter > Noise > Add Noise and choose a value of 20%. When asked if we want to rasterize the layer, we confirm with OK.

2. Create Text and Add Glitter Effect – image 6

We do the same for the second layer, but with a strength of 21%.

2. Create Text and Add Glitter Effect – image 7

And once more for the third layer with a value of 22%. Now we have a different noise behavior for each of the three layers.

2. Create Text and Add Glitter Effect – image 8

3. Create Sparkles

Next, we create an empty layer above each text layer to place different star patterns on them.

3. Create Sparkles – image 9

You can also find star brushes on PSD-Tutorials.de, and using your selected star brush, you create many stars on the bottom layer. Also, vary the brush size slightly to place the stars in a nice random pattern.

3. Create Sparkles – image 10

Repeat this process for the remaining two star layers to achieve a different star pattern.

3. Create Sparkles – image 11

4. Animate Glitter

Now comes the exciting part, we will animate our created glitter. To do this, we go to Window > Animation...

4. Animate Glitter – image 12

Then in the appearing window, we click on the bottom right icon for the Frame Animation...

4. Animate Glitter – image 13

After that, we click twice on the small page-tear icon at the bottom to create two additional frames.

4. Animate Glitter – image 14

We then select the first frame and display the first text layer accordingly with its corresponding star layer.

4. Animate Glitter – image 15

Then, we click on the second frame and display the second pair of text and star layers...

4. Animate Glitter – image 16

And on the third frame, we display the last two layers.

4. Animate Glitter – image 17

After that, holding down the Shift key, we select all three frames at once...

4. Animate Glitter – image 18

...next to the seconds count, click on the small triangle and set a playback duration of 0.2 seconds per frame.

4. Animate Glitter – image 19

And so that the animation is not played only once, but repeatedly in a loop, as shown below, we set unlimited.

4. Animate Glitter – image 20

When we then press the Play button, our animation plays.

4. Animate Glitter – image 21

5. Saving the animation

To save our animation, we go to File>Save for Web & Devices.

5. Saving the animation – image 22

And in the window that appears, we just need to select GIF. Then we click on Save and our animation is saved.

5. Saving the animation – image 23

Often, animations opened with image viewers do not play. Only one frame is displayed. However, to view the animation, it is sufficient to simply drag and drop the image file into a browser window. Then it will play.

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial. Here is our final result:

5. Saving the animation – image 24

Jana Zemke
Trainer About Jana Zemke Jana Zemke is a digital and print media designer from Berlin. She has been working with Photoshop, image editing and retouching since 2004. All courses by Jana Zemke