psFreak - 3D Styled Text

Step 1

First of all add some normal text into your document (works best on a white background), I have used a font called Delicious Heavy. Choose a font that is bold and clear.

Step 2

Now because we want to adjust the text using the transform option we need to rasterize the text layer so go to the layers window and right click on the text layer and select Rasterize Type. Now we can go Edit > Transform > Perspective. Drag one of the bottom corner boxes outwards while holding the shift key (this does the other side too to keep the sides even).

Hit enter to set the transformation.

Step 3

Duplicate the text layer and move it up by one pixel. The short cut for duplicating a layer is Ctrl + J and the short cut for moving it up a pixel is Ctrl + Up arrow key (while keeping the text tool selected). Repeat this process 15-20 times until you have something like…

Step 4

Now we are going to be doing the top of the text - the colour. Select the top layer (the most recent duplication of the text layer) and add a gradient overlay (Layer > Layer Style > Gradient Overlay).

Step 5

On the bottom text layer (the original one) add an outer glow (Layer > Layer Style > Outer Glow).

Step 6

Now merge all of the text layers left (the ones without layer styles) and add a gradient overlay to the merged layer (Layer > Layer Style > Gradient Overlay).

Step 7

To finish with we are going to give it a shine, so using Elliptical Marquee Tool make a selection above the text on a new layer and fill it with white. Select the area of the top text layer (the coloured one) and invert the selection and hit delete. Lower the opacity of the shine layer to 33% and you are finished!

Comments

David Newby

January 28th, 2008

This is well written, and i found easy to achieve, i found a site with the font on but i assume you can use any heavy font to achieve the same thing

Great and thanks

Alecal

January 28th, 2008

Kinda nice..

António luis

January 28th, 2008

Excelent Tutorial :D.

James

January 28th, 2008

Thanks guys, yea I couldn’t remember which site I got the font from. I’ll be making a post with a collection of different fonts on it which I will be referring to in future tutorials so you can use the exact font that I’ve used

ridwan

January 29th, 2008

i like it … thanks

alex

February 11th, 2008

this was really good for me much appreciated mate. You’ve got a good way of explaining things

keith

February 11th, 2008

I don’t understand the last step.

Select the area of the top text layer (the coloured one) and invert the selection and hit delete.

What exactly do you mean by select the area of the top text layer?

James

February 11th, 2008

keith, what you are wanting to do is get rid of the excess white outside of the text area (even though you can’t see it on the white background).

Go to the layers window and Ctrl + Click the text layer at the top’s icon - this gives the marching ants around the text, then invert that selection to select everything outside of that and then hit delete.