How to Create an Effect For Cutting Text in Half in Adobe Photoshop


Staff member
Pro Member
This is one of those text effects that you've always wondered how to do, but never quite figured out. It's pretty easy and I'd say it's as flexible as it gets, if you incorporate Smart Objects in to the mix. All that's needed to pull this effect off is to write out some text in Adobe Photoshop, create a path and then mask that path with a vector mask. I actually just wrote an entire post about this effect in the blog. You can view that post here.


Here are the summarized instructions for the creation of this effect in Photoshop.

- Create new document in Photoshop to your size specifications.

- Write out the text you'd like to apply the effect to.

- Right-click on the text layer in the Layers panel and choose Convert To Smart Object from the menu that appears.

- Use the Rectangle Tool to draw a box around the lower half of the document, through half of the text.

- Press and hold the Ctrl key (Command on Mac) on your keyboard and then click on the Add Layer Mask button at the bottom of the Layers panel. This should make the top half of the text disappear.

- Duplicate the text layer by selecting it in the Layers panel and then by using the keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+J.

- With the Rectangle Tool still active, go to the options bar up top and click on the Path Operations icon.

- Then, click on the Subtract Front Shape option. This will make the top half of the text appear again.

- Activate the Move Tool and then nudge one of the text layers where you'd like.

That's pretty much it. I think you'll find this way the most flexible because you can always double-click on one of the text layers to edit the text itself. Also, you can edit the color and other text attributes as well. Let me know if you have any questions.