Create inner shadows for editable text in Illustrator

As we all know, Adobe Illustrator doesn’t have a feature to create inner shadows. Some time ago, on our website we suggested a method to create inner shadows with the help of the Clipping Mask and the Drop Shadow effect, which, unfortunately, cannot be applied to editable text. Today, we will consider a method allowing creation of inner shadows for editable text, which was suggested by one of our readers - Prophet. Thank you very much; I’m very pleased that you share your interesting ideas and solutions with us.

You can download the source vector file for this tutorial

Step 1

Create a background of any color (I used the pixel seamless pattern only because it’s pretty). Take the Type Tool (T) and type any text.

Step 2

Open the Appearance panel and create a new fill by clicking on the Add New Fill button.

Change the black fill to the grey one.

Step 3

Apply the Screen blending mode to the grey fill.

Keep the text and the fill selected in the Appearance panel, go to the Effect > Transform & Distort > Transform… and set a value of vertical and horizontal shift.

Step 4

Now go to the Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur… and set the blurring radius.

Apply the Multiply blending mode to the entire text object - that makes the parts of the grey fill, which extends the outlines of the letters, transparent.

As you can see, our text remains editable. Moreover, you can save this style in the Graphic Styles panel and apply it to any other text objects.

The method described above works equally good in the CMYK as well as in the RGB color mode.

You can download the source vector file for this tutorial