Text Gradients

This is a brief article explaining how to take text and fill it with gradient colors.

Here are three sets of text. The top shows the text in a text frame, then two copies were made and positioned below.


 * 1) Select the frame then click Item > Convert To > Outlines, or use the Context menu Convert To > Outlines. This converts each letter to an outline (in other words, a shape), and also groups the letters.
 * 2) You will need to select this group (click on it). In the middle example, we are trying to make individual gradients in each letter, so we then click Item > Ungroup to separate the individual letters.
 * 3) Now click each one and use the gradients in Properties > Colors as desired. If you do not ungroup, you can choose different colors for each letter, but there will be one kind of gradient possible for all letters – you may need to click outside the group, then back to the next letter to switch from one letter to the next.


 * In the bottom example, we have made one continuous gradient across all the letters – this is a four-color gradient, going from red to yellow to magenta to blue. After step 1 above, Convert To > Outlines, we have then clicked Item > Combine Polygons, so that then you can make one large gradient over the entire collection of combined letters.

For some tips on putting images in text, check How to fill a Scribus text with an image, and for hints on text over images see Text over images.