Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Rough Metal Text Effect

Intro:

Let's create a rough metal text effect, we're going to use a metal texture I've explained in detail in a previous tutorial. Below is what we're going to be making with this text effect tutorial:

Rough Metal Photoshop Text effect
Step 1:

First off, create a new file with the dimensions 500px wide by 200 height, fill the background with a #272727 color. Note: The dimensions of this file has to be 500x200 since we're going to use a metal texture from an earlier tutorial that has these specific dimensions.

Rough Metal Photoshop Text effect
Step 2:

Now we have to open/make the texture from a previous tutorial, you could just download the texture but you'll skip the entire metal creation part, which I advice against entirely. If you want to learn how to make the metal follow the metal plate tutorial. People who want to make this metal text effect quickly can download the metal texture.

Once opened drag the texture onto our project we just changed the background of, make sure the texture is aligned right. Then change the blend mode of the texture to Soft light.

Rough Metal Photoshop Text effect
Step 3:

Change the foreground color to white. Type your preferred text, for tutorial sake pick something that fits the dimensions of this tutorial, I advice you use a short name (e.g. Adobe). It's also important you use a fat/wide font for this tutorial, I've used a font that comes with Adobe Photoshop CS3 called "Poplar STD", so if you have CS3 that would be a great time-saver. You can also use the "Impact" font which is a standard font in Windows, or you can download some great fonts from dafont.com.

Rough Metal Photoshop Text effect
Step 4:

Let's change the blending options of the text, do this by right-clicking the text layer in the layers palette and choosing "Blending options". First let's add a drop shadow (normally I would add a drop shadow at the very end of adding blending options).

Rough Metal Photoshop Text effect

Next up, add an Inner Glow:

Rough Metal Photoshop Text effect

Last but not least add a Bevel and Emboss:

Rough Metal Photoshop Text effect

Now we have a basic text effect:

Rough Metal Photoshop Text effect
Step 5:

create a new group by clicking the group icon in the layers palette



Now Ctrl+Click the text layer to make a selection of it like so.

Rough Metal Photoshop Text effect

Make sure you have the group selected, then add a layer mask with this icon in the layers palette.

Rough Metal Photoshop Text effect

You layers palette should now look like this, make sure you have the exact order of your layers as below:

Rough Metal Photoshop Text effect
Step 6:

Remember that we've added the texture to our project? Duplicate this texture and move it in to the group we just created and change its blend mode to Darken.

Rough Metal Photoshop Text effect

If you haven't already expand the group so we can see the texture we just moved to it, now let's duplicate this texture and change the blend mode of the duplicated texture to Soft light and its Opacity to 50%. Now we have our finished Rough metal text effect, you could tweak this so much more by using different blend modes, adding more texture, lightning and so on. Have fun!

Rough Metal Photoshop Text effect

Be inspired with this text effect tutorial in creating your awesome die cut flyers.