I originally wrote this graffiti tutorial a decade ago. While the style still looks good, the usability sucks. Total update time, let’s make the graffiti on the text layer using all layer styles. The advantage to this is 2-fold. First we can reuse the layer style and secondly, we can change the text and the style will remain on it as we edit. (Non-destructive baby!)

Step 1

Start with an appropriate font and type the word, graffiti

Here I used Tags Extreme. Download it here | Download the layer style for this tutorial

Step 2

In the layers panel, click the little fx for layer styles.

Choose gradient overlay. Click on the arrow to choose a gradient, Choose the legacy orange to yellow one.

If you don’t see legacy gradients, you can load them in like this. (or just proceed with a custom gradient)

Click on the gradient to edit it

Step 3

The gradient editor opens. Click to add a white gradient stop in the middle. (Watch the video to see how to do it)

This gives us the gradient color onto the type

Step 4

Give it a small gray stroke by using the settings shown in the stroke option, size is 10

Step 5

Because we are actually giving this a triple stroke, we need to apply an additional stroke. In Photoshop CC or newer, click the + button next to the stroke to make an additional one.

Set the bottom stroke to black and make it bigger than the gray one, so you can see it.

If you are using an earlier version of Photoshop you have to be clever. Lets use the outer glow as a secondary stroke. Choose outer glow. Blend mode in normal and black. The magic happens with the spread and size. Make sure you turn on anti aliased, or it will look blocky.

Double stroke in action!

Step 6

We now need to create the 3rd stroke which is really a hard edges drop shadow, Opacity is al 100 and once again, the magic happens with spread and size. Set the distance to suit your Image. Tip: You can drag directly on your document to set the distance and angle.

Cha! The graffiti is looking good!

Step 7

Because it’s applied as a layer style on a text layer, I can change the text to say whatever I like.

Step 8

Its really easy to add this graffiti to photographs. All you really need to do is change the blending mode to Overlay.

If you want to make it even better, use a displacement map to wrap it to your surface, tutorial on displacement maps in Photoshop

I hope you enjoyed this updated tutorial

Why don’t you Download the layer style for this tutorial

Great to see you here at the CAFE

Colin

Grab more Photoshop goodies here

The post How to make re-usable graffiti in Photoshop tutorial appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

There are so many things for you to learn in this Photoshop tutorial. We are making stone text or rock text. But really you will be learning a lot of different things including

• How to fill text with an image using Frames in Photoshop CC 2019
• How to distress text
• How to make a custom Brush
• How to make a custom texture
• How to use layer styles

I really hope you enjoy this tutorial.

Please leave a comment. Great to see you here at the CAFE

Colin

The post How to make rock text and fill text with an image in Photoshop appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

Shiny, see through, glassy, transparent text definitely has its place. If you are designing a poster, product packaging, social media card  or just for fun, glass text is sure to impress. I’m going to show you exactly how to create it in Photoshop CC and it also works on Photoshop 6, 7, CS etc. I have the easy written guide that I wrote a number of years ago, (like 10 or so). I have updated the simple steps to be current and have recorded a brand new video. The written steps will get you up and running, while the video goes more in depth and shows you a number of additional options and variations.

Creating Glass text in Photoshop, an easy step by step guide

In this Photoshop tutorial, we are going to create a transparent glassy effect that allows the background to show thorough.

Step 1

Start with a background. 72dpi and RGB mode.

Step 2

Add some text, here I used galant (www.1001freefonts.com)

Step 3

Add a layer style by clicking the little “f” at the bottom of the layers pallette.

Add a dropshadow and a bevel, copy the settings shown here.

Note 2 things here that really make the glass “pop”

1. Change the contour, this gives the reflected look.
2. uncheck the global light and change the altitude to 53.

A listing of the Layer Style Contours in Photoshop

The layer Style Contour options are in many places in the Layer Styles panel in Photoshop. Here I am going to show you what they are all named and what they look like. Go to the end of this tutorial where I will show you how to create your own custom contours!

This is the sample text we will be using, so you can see the effect of only changing the contour, everything else is the same.

To let you see what each of the contours look like, I have created this chart.

Photoshop Layer Style Contour Chart

Ok, back to the tutorial.

Step 4

Here is the result, pretty uninspiring huh?

Step 5

This step is where the magic happens!

In the styles palette, click on the Custom blending options. (you can also do this from the layers panel)

Now pull the fill opacity all the way to 0 and the rabbit comes out of the hat!

Step 6

Here is our glass type.

How to make your own Contour in Adobe Photoshop | Custom Layer Style Contour

As cool as all these presets are, you can really step it up a notch by creating your own custom contour so match the effect you want exactly.

You can find the contours in several places in Photoshop. This is the Layer Styles dialog box.

To edit a contour, click on its thumbnail.

The contour editor will open. To change the settings, drag the points on the curve and imagine the curve is the cross section shape you are making, because it is. The corner box will make a hard edge, if you uncheck the box, it will be a rounded edge.

Your contour will be called custom

Click on new to add it to your list in the editor.

When you are happy with your curve, you can save it, by clicking  save

Here I have named it glass and thats it!

Loading Custom Contours into Photoshop

When you are in the Contour Editor, you can choose the presets from a list under preset, choose custom when you are making your own

To load in custom ones you have created or downloaded, choose Load

Navigate to the contour

And its added to your list

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and the extra lesson on creating custom contours. If you haven’t watched the companion video at the top, please do because it has a lot of stuff not covered here, the 2 supplement each other. (One of the awesome things about PhotoshopCAFE, we are one of the only Photoshop free tutorial sits that give you BOTH written instruction AND video for most of our tutorials, double the learning).

Thanks for checking this out, don’t forget to check out our other tutorials here at PhotoshopCAFE, there is a LOT of good stuff in our pages 🙂

Don’t forget to comment, bookmark this page, share it and sign up for ou weekly mailing list where Ill give you new tutorials!

Colin Smith (PhotoshopCAFE Founder

The post Transparent Glass Text Photoshop Tutorial appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

Check out all the other free tutorials here at PhotoshopCAFE!

Add a comment and subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss a new tutorial.

Hey, Cafe Crew, it’s Colin Smith here from Photoshop Cafe and today, I am going to show you how to create the type from Thor Ragnarok.

Alright, so what we are going to do is we are going to start with the Type tool, make sure to select Black as our foreground color. And we are going to type in Ragnarok. Now, notice the font I am using here ‘Dameron Bold’ and I got that from DA font. You might some others that are more accurate but it is pretty close to what they are using. And I am just going to increase the size of it. And we are going to drop that in the middle there.

Alright, let’s just create a new layer. And what I am going to do is I am going to just hit the Ctrl key or the Command and click on the Type here and make a selection and make sure, our layer on top is selected. Now we are going to fill it with a gradient. So we need to find those colors. So let’s click on the Gradient Tool and when you see that make sure Linear is selected and then you will see the Gradient Swatch. Click on there and this will pop it open. So let’s make the gradient by the way, it’s incredibly 80s kind of a looking thing there, you feel like you want to drive an ‘Iroc Camaro’, maybe it’s kind of the humor there, I am not sure.

But anyway, so we are going to click on this there and now what we want to do is we want to get rid of this color stop by just clicking and dragging it away. Now we are going to click on the next one and we are going to change this to red. So let’s grab that red that we are using right here, click OK, and now, we are going to click and drag the white one, pull it away.

Alright, let’s pull this way down here and then we are going to take this middle, this is where the two blend, we are going to pull that across because we want that to look pretty much like that. I think that’s pretty similar to what we see on the logo and then I am going to click OK.

Now, I am going to, with the gradient tool still selected, linear, normal. We are going to start at the top and I am going to hold down the shift key and I am going to drag it down and then I am going to release and then what that does is it creates our Type and I am just going to click away.

Alright, so we have got a gradient on top. Then next thing we need to do though is we need to put that white outline around it but the white outline doesn’t go around the whole type, just around the top and it fades out. So, I will show you a little trick for that. So I am just going to hit Ctrl + J to copy it and then I am going to hide this layer in between, so you can see we have got the black and just so we can see what’s going on when we do it.

Now, let’s go down here and maybe, if we want to change our background, to black, it might make it easier. Alt + Delete, Option Backspace on Mac will fill with the foreground color with just black. Alright, let’s select our layer on the top, here we are going to choose effects and now, we are going to choose stroke. And let’s just pull this out of the way, so we can see what’s going on. What we want to do is create a nice white stroke and notice its inside and that’s looking good.

Now, we want this to fade out around about the middle. So what we are going to do is we are going to create a new layer mask, then we are going to grab our gradient tool and then we are going to change this foreground to background. There we go. And notice it is looking really weird. That’s okay. Let’s turn on our layer underneath and now, what we are going to do is fix the reason why it is looking so strange. So if we go under here and we double click on effects, and we go and we have our blending options, just turn on layer mask hide effects and boom! Now it is going to look good.

Very simple!

Alright, we are getting there. We are very close. We have got two other things that we need to do. We need to create this little kind of glim in there and we also need to get the 3D extrusion. So why don’t we start with the 3D extrusion and I am going to go down there, we are going to hide this so that we can see it. And we are going to select our type layer. And of course, if I hide the background, you can see it right there. Now, we are going to go up under 3D and we are going to choose new extrusion and it is going to pop up, ‘Do you want a 3D workspace?’ – yeah, sure, why not? So we have got our extrusion but we need to make that extrusion red and we need to make it go down a little bit. So what we are going to do is, why don’t we have a look at the color? So if you see under the 3D panel, go to the materials one which is the third one over, and we are going to choose the extrusion material, under the [Inaudible 04:49] make it red, click OK. There we go.

Now we are going to change the shape of this. We will click once on the type and you will see this little gimbal thing here and I am going to drag it up. We are going to bring it up near the top here and notice that lets the extrusion show through a little bit more and maybe even increase the depth a little bit. Give it a little bit of red. Looking close, we got to fix the lighting. Click this little light icon and this enables us to set the direction of the light which is more coming from this direction which is close to what they do on the movie poster. Okay, so another thing we need to do this turn the shadow off because we don’t want any shadows because they didn’t use any. And that’s looking pretty good.

Alright, so let’s go back to our layers panel and we are going to select our two layers there, when you select the layers, Shift select, get both layers here. So now what we are going to do is just drag this up, I am going to hold down the shift key, so we keep pour positioning right on top. Alright, looking good, so now we are still going to do this little glassy thing here and also the grooves in there. So why don’t we create these grooves now?

So what I am going to do is I am going to just create a new layer on the top and I am going to grab the line tool, okay. With the line tool, I have set it to about 4 pixels right now and I am just going to select and drag across and I am using black right now. I am just hitting the V key, just to hit the move and I am just going to pull it down. Now I want to copy this, so that would be Ctrl + J, Command J on Mac and then I am going to hold down Shift and hit the arrow key, the up arrow key once. Let’s do the same thing again, Ctrl + J to copy, Shift arrow key and that moves it up one more time. Alright, let’s do it one more Ctrl + and Shift and arrow to bring it up one more time. Alright, so we have got those lines and now, there’s a couple of ways that we can do this. Let me select these lines here, that’s the four layers and I want to merge them together. Ctrl + E and that would be Command E on Mac to merge. Now, there’s a couple of ways of doing this. One of them, I could drag it down here and if I hit the Alt or the Option key, while I go between the two layers and I click in here, I can clip those in there. See that? And that actually works quite well.

The other way I could do it if I wanted to actually cut that out and put a little bevel in there, if you really wanted to do that but I think this is going to work quite well. And let’s turn our background on.

One last thing left, if you noticed inside here we have this kind of like glassy kind of 80s, cromy thing going on, let’s just call it that. Alright, so let’s do that now. So I am just going to create a new layer and then what I want to do is I am going to grab our Line tool one more time, but this time make sure to set the pixels, make sure the foreground set to wide and let’s go little bit wider, I don’t know, maybe 8 and I am just going to drag that across and then just kind of bump it up a little bit. Okay, looking good. And I need to get that above everything else. Okay, great. So what I am going to do now is I am going to just blur it. So I am going to choose filter blur and we are going to grab that Gaussian Blur. And that’s not bad, maybe a little wider, there you go. This is looking quite good. And I want to kind of double up on that, so Ctrl + J and that gives us two of those layers and I select them together, hit Ctrl + E to merge them and maybe add a blur one more time. Okay, there we go. And I am going to hit Ctrl + J again, just to increase the density of that. So what I should have done is maybe just start with a wider line but this will work fine. So we hit Ctrl + E once again, selecting the two layers to get them in there.

Alright, so what we want to do now is we just want to make them fit within that area. So the way to do that is just Ctrl + Click on the type layer, that selects the outline of the type, we want to just mask that out, so we just going to click on the layer mask and notice that that gives us that there and we are almost there.

I have got one more thing that I want to do and that’s just to create that kind of little curvy thing in there. So why don’t we go in and that’s a technical term and we are going to grab the pen tool. Now, if you are using the Photoshop CC 2018, you will notice is a new curvature pen tool. So all we are doing is we are just dragging across and I am just going to make curve in there, you will see what I am going to do in a sec, and see with this curvature pen, we could actually click in there and create this wavy little thing by clicking and dragging like that, see that?

Now, of course, you can do this manually with the pen tool, just by dragging around. Alright, so that’s pretty good, let me bring that one down a little bit though and I will bring this one down. Cool, so we have got, okay, let’s add a little bit more. There we go. So we have got that kind of wavy thing, you know, it is a very kind of 80s computer, early computer kind of way of creating it, it is kind of fun effect, it is kind of cool that they did this.

So let’s go around here, we are just going to click around to just kind of close this path out. Excellent. Now we need to make a selection out of this. So what we want to do is we just want to get on to the [Inaudible 10:30] panel if it is not showing. So we just going to window, [Inaudible 10:34] and you will see the [Inaudible 10:37] panel and then all we need to do is Ctrl + Click or Command + Click on Mac and that makes the selection around there, excellent. So let’s go to our layers panel and all we want to do now is just fill that part of that mask with black. And notice we have got the foreground color now is black. So if we just hit the Alt + Delete on Windows and that would be Alt + Backspace on Mac and then we just turn off Ctrl + D and there we go.

Alright, now I am going to show you how to create the bevel around these slots, just for fun. So if you remember, we’ve put them on this layer. So all we need to do is Ctrl or Command Click to load the selection from that layer. Now we are going to hide it and then the next layer down, notice that this is our type. So we are just going to go on there and we are just going to hit the Delete key and then Ctrl + D to turn it off. And now we have actually got the cuts. Now, if we want to give these cuts that 3 Dimensional [Inaudible 11:40], what we are going to do is choose effects and then we are going to choose bevel and emboss. And notice that when we turn that bevel and emboss on, that is looking a lot more like what we have got in there. In fact if you turn that depth down a little bit and play around with the size, to about there, click OK and that’s pretty much what we have got there on the logo.

Alright, so there we go guys.

If you liked this tutorial, smash that Like button into dust. If you like Photoshop tutorials, I do at least one a week, make sure you hit the subscribe button right now, become part of the Cafe Crew and you get my new tutorials every week. Add a comment, I would love to talk to you and until next time, I will see you at the Cafe.

Great to see you here at the CAFE

Colin

The post How to make Thor Ragnarok 80s Chrome logo in Photoshop Tutorial appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

(I’ve even thought about doing an extended premium tutorial on type and typography (2-3 hour range) if you’re interested, let me know in the comment, otherwise I won’t bother if there isn’t enough interest )

There is a type warp tool in Photoshop that you can use to do some cool stuff quickly. However, this method gives you way more control AND its a lot of fun 🙂

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial

Colin

How to Make Shapes with Text – Type on a Path in Photoshop

Hey Cafe Crew, it’s Colin Smith here from PhotoshopCAFE and you can find me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @ PhotoshopCAFE. You can also visit me on PhotoshopCAFE.com.

All right, today I’m going to show you some things with Type that you may not even be aware of you can do in Photoshop. There’s actually a lot of things we can do with Orientation, so I’m going to show you how to do Type on a path and then I got another cool trick I’ll show at the end. This is going to be quick, so let’s get started.

So the first thing I’m going to do, here’s a photograph. I’m just going to grab the Pen Tool here and then I’m just going to click up, then go down, and let’s just create a nice little kind of a curve here that will be kind of fun.

All right, so the next thing we’re going to do is we’re going to grab the Type Tool and this is how you do it. If you’ll look in here, you’ll see there’s no align to type here or Type on a Path option.

What you do is you move it over and then notice how you see that little wiggly thing there at the bottom of the Type Tool? Click on here and now we type in “Type on a Path at Sunset,” and at this point here, all we need to do is just select our Type. We can change the size of it, you know, we can change the color. You know, we can do all those kind of things.

We can change the font style. Now, let me just do Bold and okay, so we’ve got “Type on a Path at Sunset.” Notice that and if you want to move them around, just grab the Type Tool here like if we want to change the spacing, hit the Alt key and then hit the arrow key. Notice that you can kind of nudge that and play around with it.

And maybe I want to make that one a little closer, so the left arrow key will make it closer, holding down Alt or Option and the right, we’ll take that away. So, that’s how you kind of fix that. It’s looking good. And of course, we can put Drop Shadows and all those kind of things on here, so let’s just put a Drop Shadow on there really quick.

Let’s change the Spread all the way down. Get the size and give it a little bit of distance. Just for fun, the other thing, by the way, you can drag this around. I don’t know if you knew that. And let’s take the size down and just make it hard. There we go. That will just kind of make it pop a little bit.

All right, so we’ve got that. What else can we do? Okay, this is where we’re going to really step it up. So, we can go to these shapes, so let’s grab the shape like let’s go to the Custom Shape Tool and just for fun, we’ll grab something like a love heart. Okay, ’cause you know, we all love the sun.

Now, under the Options on the left, we want to make sure we choose Path and then just click and drag. Notice it gets so weird. Hold down the Shift key and we can constrain the shape, and if you want to move it around, just hit the Spacebar and we can move it around and we’re going to pop it right over here, and I’m just going to make it a little smaller. There we go. Now we got a path.

Now let’s grab our Type Tool again and this time, notice that little thing, there’s a wiggly thing. You go inside and you see the circle. I’m going to click and now I’m going to insert some type. Let’s make it smaller so we can actually see what we’re doing, make it about a 10. And now, you know, we could type that in or we can go up here, and we can go to the Type Tool.

Go down to paste ‘Lorem Ipsum’ and boom! It will put the text in there. Click away and there we are. We were able to create that love heart. Now, of course, if you want to make it stand out a little bit more, just go like that. Change the font to maybe something like just a regular font and maybe drop the size down a little bit.

And if we need to paste some more, we can always do that. Just go under the Type, of course, and paste ‘Lorem Ipsum’ again. And if this is not enough, Ctrl Copy, select it there and we can just paste it a couple of times. That was Ctrl C to copy, Ctrl V to paste. And it’s almost looking good.

One last thing I want to do is I’m just going to select and then hit Ctrl A to select it all. Let’s change the alignment to Center Align and boom; we’ve now got a love heart made out of Type.

So anyway, guys, as I promised, short and sweet; some cool things you can do with the Type Tool and I bet you maybe you didn’t know or maybe you did, but I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, hit the Subscribe button right now and subscribe to our YouTube channel and you’ll get at least one new tutorial every single week. If you liked this, smash that Like button into dust, add a comment, and until next time, I’ll see you at the Cafe.

The post Align type to a path and inside a shape in Photoshop tutorial appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

This Photoshop tutorial shows you how to add type so that it loooks like it’s part of the photo. You will learn several things here including:

• How to add type to a photo
• How to sample color
• How to distress type
• how to warp text to fit a shape
• How to use blending modes to add realism
• how to add depth with layer styles

Thanks for checking out this week’s tutorial.

How to Add Realistic Text to a Photo in Adobe Photoshop. Also works on Illustrations.

Hey Cafe Crew, it’s Colin Smith here and this week, I’m going to show you how to add some text to this barrel that make it look realistic like it was kind of engraved in there. So I’m just going to take advantage of some Blending Modes and some different things inside of Photoshop.

Create and color the text

Step 1

Open photo (Or illustration)  you will use.

Step 2.

Let’s select a color.

We will use a color from the photo. Grab the Color Picker, using the Eyedropper to sample the darker wood on that barrel.

Step 3.

Choose the the Type Tool. I’m using a condensed font, it’s Bernard MT Condensed.

And I’m going to type in PHOTOSHOP CAFE, and drag it into position.

Step 4

The quickest way to resize the text is to hit Ctrl T, that would be Command T on Mac, move to the corner, hold down the Shift key to constrain it and then drag it out in proportion  to fill up that barrel.

Hit Enter now to apply it.

Making the text wrap around the object

There’s two things we need to do:

1.  One, we want to make it wrap around the shape a little bit
2. We really want to kind of make it look like it’s not just stuck on there, but it’s actually part of the texture so it’s actually textured

Step 5

Right click on the type layer In the Layers panel and then choose Rasterize Type. This will convert it to pixels so that we can distort those pixels.

Step 6

Hit Ctrl/Cmd + T; for free Transform.

Right click and choose Warp because it enables us to match curves and it works nicely on rounded surfaces. (Now we don’t have to rasterize the type to use warp, but some of the other things we are going to do, we will need the type rasterized).

Grab the middle part and pull it down a little bit, so it’s just kind of bulging a little bit more in the middle.

Pull down on the edges to make it look like it’s following the contour. Tip: With the Warp Tool, you can click on the points OR you can drag inside the mesh to make it work.

Hit Enter to apply it .

Blending the texture into the type in photoshop

The last thing we need to do is blend the type into the texture, we’re going to change the Blend Mode.

Step 7

On the top of the Layers panel you will see the word “normal” this is the layer blending mode. (Download my free ebook on Layer blending modes to fully understand them).

Change the blending mode to Overlay Blend Mode. That’s working pretty well,  Now we can see the wood texture coming through the text, and it doesn’t look just stuck there anymore.

These are the basic steps. For extra realism, read on!

Xtra Credit: Upping the realism of Photoshop text with rough edges and an embossed look.

Now we will roughen it up a little bit.

Step 8

Create a Layer Mask on the type layer, by selecting the type layer and clicking the Layer Mask button in the bottom of the Layers panel. (The rectangle icon with the circle in it)

Press the D key to Choose black as a foreground color.

Hit the B key to choose the Brush Tool. Make sure Opacity is all the way to 100 and Blend Mode is in Normal.

We’re going to find a rough brush. If you look at the top options bar, click the brush in the top left. You will see a panel with a gear. Click on the gear icon.

Now, you can load in different types of brushes from the list that appears. You’ll see, dry medium brushes, choose them.

Select append from the options that appear.

step 9

Grab a rough edged brush. When you paint with black on the mask, You are just of nibbling at those edges a little bit to create a little bit more of a distressed look.

And this is also what you would do if you wanted to just create basic distressed type. Now I’m not going to get too carried away because I don’t want it to be too beaten up and distressed, but you get the general idea.

Tip: You can download brushes from places like Brusheezy or DeviantArt and stuff like that, and you could find some custom brushes that would actually do a much better job of this.(Maybe I’ll add some to PhotoshopCAFE soon).

Adding 3D Depth to text

There’s another thing we can do to make it look like it was seared in there a little bit and it’s got a little bit of a depth, like maybe they used a hot brand or something like that.

Step 10

With the type layer selected, click on the little “fx” at the bottom of the layers panel to add a layer style. Choose  an Inner Shadow. Turn the Opacity all the way up to 100 and give it a little bit of Distance and see how that gives it that kind of chiseled in look.

Change the angle and you can see it starts to look like it’s chiseled into the wood.

So, anyway, that’s a really simple little tutorial there on how to add Type and make it look a lot more realistic.

Now notice that the Blending Modes play a big part in making this look realistic and there’s a ton of things you can do with Layer Blending Modes. And because of that, I’ve actually created a free e-book for you. There’s no advertising right here. It’s just pure content. Check out that e-book. It gives an example of every single Blending Mode and also a bunch of places where it could be used. Grab the free Layer Blending modes ebook here! (200,000 downloads so far! Yay!)

So anyway, thanks, guys, for checking out this tutorial, don’t forget, leave a comment. Let’s get a discussion going. I do my best to answer all the questions.

I hope you have fun with it and get ready for a new one everyweek!

Dont forget to check out our premium tutorials for unmatched Photoshop learning!

Until next week.

Great to see you here at the CAFE

Colin

The post How to blend text into a photo realistically in Adobe Photoshop tutorial appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

Make plants and grass grow out of text in Photoshop tutorial

Written steps coming in a day or 2.

Put a Photo Inside Text in Photoshop

Cafe Crew, it’s Colin Smith here from PhotoshopCAFE and today I’ve got a really fun tutorial for you. I’m going to show you how to take text and have these plants growing out of it so it kind of looks like the are going to be in the shape of the text. I think you’ll see what I mean in a second, so let’s get started.

The first thing we want to do is we’re going to create some text and this blue color’s fine. It doesn’t really matter too much what color we’re going to do right now. We could change it later whatever you want, so I’m going to type in the word “Plants.” Notice I’m using _[00:00:29] Black. You want to have a really bold font for this; it really works best. And to resize I just hit Ctrl T, that would be Command T, to bring up Free Transform, and then I’m just going to hit the Option key to drag this from the middle and Shift to constrain the size of it and we’re going to drag it out until we get a nice big piece of text there. There we go.

I’m kind of liking that so I’m going to put it just on an area here where most of the text is going to be covered, but we’re going to have some areas here where we’re going to have these growing out of the top, so you just want to kind of position that where you think it’s going to look good. Now you can experiment and play around with it and find the best position once you kind of understand what’s going on. All right, so that’s the first tip we’ve got here.

Now, in order to make this really work, we have to right-click here and we’re going to rasterize this type, so we’re going to choose Rasterize and what it does is just turns it into pixels because we’re going to need that for this effect. Okay, so I’m going to hide that now and we’re going to go down into the next layer and we’re going to choose the background and I want to select only the white. So we’re going to grab our Magic Wand Tool, set the tolerance to 1. Make sure the sampling is set to a Point Sample would be good and we want to make sure that Contiguous is turned off. That way, it will pick up all the other little bits of white in-between those little trap spaces, so if we click once, we’re going to make a selection.

You can see here, in those little trap spaces there because Contiguous is off, we’re now selecting all those areas. Now, we want to inverse the selection so Command Shift I and that will be Ctrl Shift I on Windows, and now what we’re doing is we’re selecting only the pixels. So we want to pop those pixels up on to their own layer, so the way to do that is hit Command J or Ctrl J, and then I’m going to hide the background layer and there we go, we can see we’ve cut it out there. Now the reason I did it that way is I could have used the mask but I want to keep this background, just in case I need it later to clean up some things.

Now what we want to do is we want to make the grass fit within the text, so let’s turn on the text layer, drag that grass layer above it, and now we’re going to move our pointer in-between the two layers, so this is in-between our grass or our plant and the text layer. Hit the Alt or Option you’ll see the little arrow there in the Layers panel, click and now it clips it within there. All right, so we’ve basically clipped an image inside text, but we want to have some of this growing out of the top of the text, so what we want to do is we want to select the plants. So, hit Ctrl key, move your pointer over the plant layer in the layers panel, hold down Ctrl or Command and then click, and notice now you’ll see the selection is active for that plant. It’s showing the transparency of the plant.

So we’re going to go now into the plant layer. This is where we want to paint. So we’re going to grab B for the Brush or just grab the Brush Tool and you want to make sure that we go under the Brush’s options here and we’re going to change the hardness all the way up to 100, and we can set the size to whatever we want here. I’m going to start at about 40, but we can use the left and right bracket keys to make that bigger. So let’s just paint across the top here. Just do it one letter at a time. Let’s start with the “A” and that looks good. See how we got the plant’s kind of growing out of there. We’re going to do the same thing with the “P.” Now I’m going to do this quickly, but what you could do is spend a little bit of time if you wanted and really kind of finesse the way this is growing and you could customize it to work perfectly for what it is that you want to do.

So let’s do the next letter which is the “L” and just be aware if there are little half bits there that are kind of growing out that are not going to work. You want to kind of make it look like it’s rooted here and growing out of those letters themselves, so, you know, a little bit of playing around and experimentation and you’ll figure out what starts to look best for your particular use here in your text. So let’s do that out of the “T.” We got all these kind of growing out of here and out of the “S.” Now you could do this with different objects so, obviously, it doesn’t just have to be plants. Now Valentineís Day is coming up, you could do this with roses if you want to or whatever. So, anyway, there we go. We’ve got our plants kind of growing out of there, but now let’s get those little blue bits in there.

What if we want to hide the actual text or the color of it? Really easy because we got this selected right now. All we need to do is go down to the Add Layer Mask and if we add the layer mask, notice what it does is it hides our text there. Now you might find some little areas, little stray areas there that you might want to clean up. You could do that. And here’s another option, what we could do is if we wanted to show this growing from the ground or we could simply select our layer there–notice the plants layer, not the mask right now. We want to select the layer itself and just hit the D key. We want to choose black as our foreground color because we can paint in there.

Notice the black is going to show that, so let’s just make our brush a little bit bigger and notice how we can just paint across there, just doing that and that’s now going to show the plants. So, if you wanted to kind of paint that in so it makes it look it’s growing out of the ground, you can do that. Now, obviously, this is an optional step right there, but you can see, you could kind of make this a little smaller, you can make it hilly, you could do different things with it to kind of give it that effect of looking like this is kind of growing out of the ground. All right, it’s starting to look good.

Now the last thing we want to do is we just want to kind of show something behind it to really make it pop. Now you could drag this into another image and different things like that, but let’s create a new layer right now and what I’ll do is I’ll just create a kind of a sky thing, so we’re going to go just a sky blue, so let’s go to the blue here and grab something that looks kind of nice, maybe there, it looks like a kind of a nice blue. And then, what we’re going to do is we’re just going to grab our Gradient Tool, foreground to background, and I’m just going to drag it down a little bit, and you can see we’ve got a kind of growing out of there now, so that’s pretty neat.

Now there’s one other thing that you could do if you wanted something just a little bit different. Of course we could go in here and you know, say for example, you wanted to just make it a silhouette instead, we could do that if we just hit the D key. Notice that there’s black there–it’s the foreground. And then, Alt Backspace will fill with the foreground, but what we want to do is we actually want to go up into the plants layer here because that’s what we want to fill, because that’s where our color’s going to be. So, if we hit the Alt and if we do the Backspace, it’s just going to fill it, but if we want to preserve the transparency, also hold down the Shift key. So what we’re doing is Alt Shift Backspace and you see we can create this cool silhouette effect that you could do for a type treatment, maybe for an article or story or you know, you could see like on Lost, you know, the beginning of a TV show or something like that. So as you can see, you know, we’ve got these different options. We can do the plant, we can do the black and white and different things.

So I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you did, hit that Subscribe button right now, become part of the Cafe Crew and every single week I’ve got a brand new tutorial on Photoshop and Lightroom, also reviews and different things with gadgets and things. So if you like this and I really hope you did, hit that Like button and share this. Tell your friends about it, also, add a comment underneath. Do you like this kind of design type of style? Do you want to go more photography, more video? What kind of things would you guys like to learn? Let me know in the comments, let’s get a discussion going and thanks for watching, guys. And until next time, I’ll see you at the Cafe.

Thanks for watching

Add a comment and check out all our other tutorials!

Colin

The post Combine type and images, How to put a photo inside text in Photoshop Tutorial appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

You are also going to learn how to make a layer style look right at any size (Just look around to see that this part is badly needed!)

Here is the tutorial

Click here to download the free layer styles and pattern 

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial

See you at the CAFE

Colin

The post How to Make a Silky Type Effect with metal edges in Photoshop Tutorial appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

There are 2 options for out line fonts. The first, is an effect where you create an outline on the type, such as a stroke or bevel.

  outline effect .      for Photoshop CC here 

The second type of outline, is for quality, flexibility and production work, this is covered in this tutorial.

A great thing about text, or type in Photoshop is that it’s vector, as all real fonts are. The only problem is when you want to do certain types of transforming, you have to rasterize. As soon as you rasterize, it’s no longer text, but a bitmap, which can’t scale without losing quality. This tutorial gives you an alternative to rasterizing, where you keep the quality of the text, no matter what. This is also what you do when sending something off to print to some printers that ask you to outline your fonts before printing.

Turning Text into a custom shape outline (Battle Angel Alita)

Let’s start with a photo I shot recently of model/cosplayer Jessie Pridemore (Rufflebutt Cosplay). I composited Jessie as Battle Angel Alita into a background. We are going to add some text.

Step 1

Choose the type tool. Here is the font choice that I used.

Step 2

Click into your document and begin typing

Step 3

Let’s add a second line of text, here is the font choice for this.

Step 4

You can see the 2 pieces of text on the page here, pretty simple stuff.

Step 5

Here is the layers panel, you can see what it looks like. Click on one of the type layers in the panel to select it

Converting text to a vector outline

Step 6

Right click on the type in the layers panel. Choose “Convert to Shape” from the menu

Step 7

Repeat for the second type layer. You will notice the layers panel now displays the text layers as shape layers. You have lost none of the quality, sharpness or edge definition, and converted the type to shape layers.

Transforming the Text in Photoshop

Step 8

With the type layer selected in the Layers panel, Press Cmd/Ctrl +T

This will take you into free transform mode and you will see this wireframe box around the text (this is called a bounding box).

Right click inside the box to see all the options. Most of these options aren’t available to regular text layers.

Choose distort.

Step 9

Drag each of the corners of the bounding box to reshape the way the text is on the page.

Step 10

Choose the other text layer and press cmd/ctrl +T

Step 11

Right click for the options and choose Distort

Step 12

Drag the corners to change the text block’s shape. (Tip: You can Control-drag each corner in free transform mode without having to right-click and choose Distort).

Changing the fill color of the text.

Step 13

You can also change the fill color of the text at any time, as well as adding a stroke outline if you want, because it’s now a vector shape.

Choose the type layer in the layers panel

Step 14

Select the Direct selection tool (it’s different than the move tool)

Step 15

Go to the top of the tool option bar and click on the Fill box.

Step 16

Choose a new color (or pattern, or gradient if you prefer). We are keeping it nice and clean and choosing black as the color, by clicking the black color swatch. Notice the type changes color as you choose the new color.

Step 17

Repeat for the second type layer.

More words

As you can see, we have a lot of flexibility with the outlined text and it keeps it’s quality, no matter how many times you shrink, or enlarge it, or modify it. Because it’s a true vector, you can scale it as large as you like and it will still look nice and crisp.

Thanks for checking out this week’s PhotoshopCAFE tutorial. Don’t forget to check out all the other tutorials here at PhotoshopCAFE. We have lots of original tutorials (no reprints here!). Also check out our Instagram, twitter, Facebook and Youtube (photoshopCAFE)

See you at the CAFE

Colin

Join us and grab your free superguide and other goodies!

The post How to outline type in Photoshop tutorial appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.

I have also included the PSD that you can download for free at the end of this tutorial. PhotoshopCAFE: doing what other tutorial sites don’t 🙂 Enjoy!

Step 1 – Creating the Text with the Star Wars font

Start with a new blank document. Set the background color to black.

Step 2

We are going to create some paragraph text.

Click the type tool

Choose bright yellow as the color. The font used on Star Wars is Franklin Gothic.

Step 3

Now, we will create a body of text. To create paragraph text, click and drag a box around the area where you want the text to go.

Either type, or paste in some text.

Here is the nonsense text used in this block, if you want to, just cut and paste it…

Step 4

We now want to add some perspective to the text. You will notice that you can’t add perspective to a paragraph of text without rasterizing it. Or can you? I have figured out a sneaky way of doing it, that is the key to this technique working. (I thank my days as a Flash designer for figuring out this kind of stuff).

Right click on the text’s Thumbnail in the Layers panel and choose “Convert to Smart Object”

Step 5. making the Star Wars Perspective text

Now, we can transform this smart object.

With the text Smart Object active in the Layers panel, Press Cmd/Ctrl+T for free transform

Right Click and choose Perspective.

Step 6

Drag the top corner in to make a perspective shape.

Press enter to apply.

Step 7

We have now made an image of the Star wars perspective text effect. This is where other tutorials end (Hopefully, Youtubers won’t rip off this tutorial, like they have a lot of my other tutorials, so sad). But this is where we kick it up a gear. We are going to make it move!

Animating the Star Wars Intro Perspective text in Photoshop CS6 or CC.

You can use any version of Photoshop to get to where we are right now, but you will need CS6 or CC to animate it.

Step 8

Open the timeline from the Window>Timeline menu if it’s not visible.

Right in the middle of the Timeline, you will see a button that says “Create Video Timeline.” Go ahead and click it

Step 9

You will now see a timeline appear in Photoshop.

I know you are tempted to try and animate things right now, but resist the urge. You won’t get a decent result animating it on this timeline.

Step 10

This is where the magic of a nested animation comes in handy. (I wrote a book on this kind of stuff in Flash  (How to Wow With Flash) and I can adapt these techniques to work in Photoshop.

Find our Smart Object with the text and double click the thumbnail

Step 11

You will notice that a new document opens with the contents of the smart object displayed. This is where we are going to do our animation.

Step 12

Go to the timeline and click the arrow on the left of the track name, to reveal the animation options.

Click the stopwatch icon to the left of the word Transform. This will create a yellow diamond which is an animation keyframe.

Step 13

On the document window, drag the text down to the bottom of the screen.

(Tip: Hold down the shift key as you drag to constrain the movement to a vertical alignment). We are setting the beginning of the animation

Step 14

Now for the end

Move the playhead to the end of the timeline, by dragging it.

Step 15

Drag the text all the way up (while holding down the Shift key). We are moving it to the end position of the animation.

Step 16

You will notice that another animation keyframe is automatically created.

Step 17

If you press the play button in the timeline (Or press the spacebar) you will notice that the text now animates from the bottom to the top of the window.

Step 18

Now for the magic!

Press Cmd/Ctrl+S to save the document (contents of smart object).

Close this window and go back to your starting document where you first created the text.

Press the spacebar / play button in the timeline

You will now see the star wars effect working!

I don’t know about you, but I think this is pretty cool.

How to export photoshop animation as a video

If you want to export this as a video do this:

Choose File>Render Video

Select Folder (name the video and select where you want it to be saved to)

Choose H.264 as the format

Preset: High Quality

Then press render

The video will now be created in the folder you chose. Be patient, it may take a while

If you are making a video from 3D in Photoshop, see instructions here

I have more Photoshop animation tutorials here

• Make Animated Rain
• Edit video in Photoshop
• Make Animated snow in Photoshop
• Make an animated cartoon Cinemagraph
• Make a Cinemagraph gif
• Make Animated Star Wars Intro

http://photoshopcafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Screen-Shot-2015-12-08-at-12.39.04-PM.jpg

I have done a lot of experimenting with video and animation in Photoshop and had the huge honor of presenting some of my techniques for Adobe at their world headquarters (several times), as well as at Adobe Max (the Adobe World Conference).

If you want to get deeper into what you can do in Photoshop with Video and animation check out the 2 premium videos that I have created. Video in Photoshop will get your feet wet and teach you the range of things you can do in Photoshop (perfect for a beginner). Then check out Making Movies in Photoshop, which picks up where Photoshop and Video leaves of. I have also written a book, Video in Photoshop with Peachpit Press that you can find at bookstores.

Thanks so much for checking out this tutorial!
Download the PSD here

Add a comment! See you at the CAFE

Colin Smith

CS6 Superguide

All the CS6 information and more is available as a PDF magazine called the CS6 Superguide. If you’re on our list, you will receive it free by email as soon as it’s available. If not, sign up now and get the CS6 Superguide for free. Or click the image below.

The post How to Create Animated Star Wars Perspective text effect in Photoshop tutorial appeared first on PhotoshopCAFE.