harsh62 / textglowdemo

Creating glowing and soft shadowed text on iPhone OS

TextGlowDemo

iPhone OS’s UILabel provides basic shadowing properties which can be used to create inset text effects and basic text shadows. However, the shadow has no blur and gives a sharp edge which is not particularly useful if you’re looking for a soft or subtle shadow.

Recently I needed to create a “glowing” text effect – essentially a soft shadow without the offset – so I wrote a simple UILabel subclass which let me specify an offset, colour and blur amount.

The screenshot shows a how the class can be used to create a glow effect but it’s equally easy to create soft shadows for your text.