Intermediate Text Effects

In this tutorial, we'll be looking at how to make text appear to actually be a part of the image - as if it was imprinted onto the image - and making it look as realistic as possible with a few other effects. Note, most images are clickable and will give way to larger, better quality images.

Download sample psd here

Note, the psd has been compressed using 7-zip freeware, please visit 7-zip.org or macupdates version here

Step 1

Image publish with permissions by Ambrozjo of sxc.hu

Download the image by clicking on this sample image or by clicking here and then open the image in photoshop. Press command/control+option/alt+C or go to Image > canvas size to bring this window up:

change the unit to percent to we'll want to extend the Width to 200% form the center of the image!

Copy the background layer by pressing command/control+J and then press command/control+T to bring up the free transform tool. Rotate the image -90 degrees (90 degrees counterclockwise) and then press command/control+option/alt+C to bring up the canvas menu again and shrink the canvas to about 66% the width and 75 % the height.

Step 2

First, you'll need to find an image or texture that you wish to match text on.Then we'll need to choose a font that we think would be a good source of inspiration (you think you'll be able to make it work). I chose University OSS Tilting as my font.

Step 3

Next, we'll want to choose the color that we want our font to be. Before you choose a font color, you might want to play with the blending modes to see the possibilities that you have before and after choosing your color(s). The image on the left is the color I chose and I set the blending mode to screen because I wanted the font to be slightly lighter for readability. Note: the blending mode may change later on in the process.

Step 4

Next, we'll want to explore the possibilities that we have with the font itself. By this I mean the character option under window > character or the "A" on the right hand side menu.

We will examine the boxes one by one, from left to right. The first box states the font that is used, the second box states the "mode" that the font is in (bold, italic, etc), the AV with the horizontal line represents the number of pixels between each character. The T with the vertical line to the left of it represents the height of the characters (this stretches the characters along the y-axis only), the T with the horizontal line under it represents the width of the character (this stretches the characters along the x-axis only). The "T's" are bold, italic, all caps, small caps, Subscript, Superscript, Underline, and Strikethrough. Here are the settings I used and here is my result:

Step 5

The next step involves a lot of playing around with the font, blending modes, and layer effects (the fx icon). So lettuce get to it! First and foremost, be sure you're working at 100% for this process. Now, we want to click on the little fx icon at the bottom left of the layers panel and then click on blending options to bring up the blending options menu.

The first layer style we will want to add is a drop shadow, however, you will see different effects as the default. The fist thing you will want to change is the color of the shadow. We cannot have a pure black shadow for this particular image so we can change it to something lighter than the color of the background but not pure white either. Since, we're trying to have the font "blend in with the image" we'll need to do some minor adjustments. I got my color from the bar on the side of the image.

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If you want to follow along exactly... I used e3d1ba as my shadow color. We can leave the opacity at the default setting along with the blending mode, we'll want to drag out the drop shadow and change the angle of light accordingly. If you want a fuzzier look then drag the Size slider higher and if you want a sharper look, reduce the Size slider. Change the Quality setting to Half Round (directly below the default Linear). I got this:

Next (no step yet!) we'll want to go to the Inner Glow option because both inner shadow and outer glow aren't the effects we're looking for in this particular project (at least not yet). Leave the blending mode as is, opacity as is, but change the color to that of the background (literally, the background of the image!) it is roughly around caad87. Move the spread out about 24 px and leave everything else and my result:

Step 6

We'll want to Bend and Emboss the font in order to obtain that realistic part-of-the-image effect! I know we have a lot going on with the Bend and Emboss option, but it'll all make sense soon! For the style, we'll want inner bend because we want the font to bend inward instead of outward, outward with a gaussian blur, etc. The technique should be either chisel hard or smooth for this particular image, direction up or down, size about 5, etc. For the tricky part... We want to change the highlight and shadow modes from the mundane black and white to something more like the image (for the sake of realistic looks). Once again I chose the white band and image background color as mentioned in step 4 as my highlight and shadow colors.

Next, we'll want to move onto the Contour option to add to the realistic looks by changing the Contour elements to Half Round at about 50%. Next, we'll want to add the exact texture or something a little different to distinguish the font from the rest of the image (isn't that contradicting the purpose of this tutorial?). So, if you so desire to download the texture of this background layer without the flourishes and other details, then please click on the image below or use the clone tool to re-create it yourself. If you're using a photoshop texture then please skip the next section and move onto step 6.

(texture)

So, if you have a texture in mind and you're sitting there with the image open in photoshop wondering what to do next, look no further! We will want to go to edit > define pattern with the image open. Note: Photoshop will define any other layers you have visible in the layers panel at the time. If you used the clone tool and did this yourself, then make all the other layers invisible and define this pattern only.

Hit OK and you now have the pattern!

Step 7

Now we want to add our texture to the font. If you're using the pattern of the background [of the image] then scale it up to 200% and a depth of about 125% and leave the invert box unchecked.

and finally... we'll want to add the satin option to give the font depth and a realistic shadowing within the font itself. (It'll make sense in a second). I used the color dcbd99 and I left the blending mode along and placed the opacity around 50%, however, most of these can be changed to create some awesome effects! I encourage you to really play around with the blending modes and if you're unsure what a blending mode then please visit the tutorial on blending modes to see what all of the blending modes do to an image or a part of an image. Anyhow, here's our result!

So here we are, finished with this tutorial and full of knowledge and ideas! Intermediate text effects!

(click me)