Glossy Emblem Text Effects

Step 1

Fire up Photoshop and set your canvas to 800×600. We’ll be using a dark perforated material for the background. This can easily be made by cutting out a pattern of circles from your background and applying a subtle bevel. Feel free to grab the background from the PSD file or use another texture if you wish.

Step 2

Next, lay out your type. I’m using black Trajan, 425px in size to cover most of our area. A couple of letters will do for now.

Step 3

Now lets slap on a barrage of layer effects. Start off by selecting your text and going to Layer > Layer Style > Drop Shadow and enter in the settings below. Then continue down the list while paying close attention to each setting and blending mode. Also take note of the different contour maps being used. You can find a larger array of contour maps.

A closer look at the color ramp for your Gradient Overlay:

And here’s what your stroke’s gradient should look like:

You should now have a beautifully reflective emblem with metal trim. But lets add that last shadow for a little depth.

Step 4

Ctrl (Command for Mac) + click on your text layer’s thumbnail (the white box with the capital ‘T’) in the layer’s palette to select it. Now create a new layer underneath your styled text by pressingCtrl + Shift + N. Fill this selection with black and Ctrl (Command for Mac) + D to deselect. Apply aMotion Blur filter with a -85 degree angle and 39px of distance. Finally, nudge this layer down a tad so most of the shadow falls below your type.

Icy Text

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1000px * 600px, leave the background colour as white, and let’s firstly make a background to work on.

Grab the Ice Grunge Brushset we just downloaded, paint around the edges of the background layer as shown below: (tip: set the opacity and flow of the brush to around 50%, and try to use a variety of brushes in the set so we can have a mixture of patterns)

Optionally, you can apply the Star Brushset for extra effect.

We can now add some cooling effect to the background. To do so, I added two adjustment layers to it:

Colour Balance

Brightness and Contrast

and here is the effect so far:

Step 2

Use the font we just downloaded and type some texts onto the document:

Apply the following layer blending option to this text layer:

Drop Shadow

Inner Shadow

Outer Glow

Inner Glow

Bevel and Emboss

Color Overlay

Gradient Overlay

Pattern Overlay

Stroke

and you will have the following effect:

Step 3

Load any one image from the Ice Package into Photoshop (I chose the ice6_0174 image), select a distinct portion of the image use the Rectangluar Marquee Tool, copy and paste the selection onto our document, rotate it slightly as shown below:

Rename this layer as “Icy Texture right” and change its blending mode to “Screen”, use the ice brushset we download to erase the edge of this layer so only the centre part of the image remains:

Duplicate this “Icy Texture right” layer once and drag the duplicated layer to the left, rename the layer as “”Icy Texture Left”, keep the blending mode as “Screen”, and you will have the following effect:

Step 4

Now let’s create some shattered ice around the text.

Load a different image from the ice package into Photoshop (I chose ice6_0176.jpg file) and use the same method as described above, select a portion of the image, copy and paste it onto our document, and put it just beneath text layer:

Use the ice grunge brushset to erase the edge and leave just the bits in the centre. (Tip: repeatly left-click the centre of this image for the shattering effect)

Rename this layer as “Background Ice Texture Right”, Add the following adjustment layers to this layer (make sure to tick “use previous layer as clipping mask” option)

Black and White

Colour Balance

and you will have the following effect:

Duplicate the above three layers, and drag them to the left, you will have the following effect:

And we can add some extra effect under the text. To do this, grab the Ellipitical Marquee Tool with 20px feather, create a new layer just below the text layer, draw a selection as shown below:

Maintain the selection, again grab the ice brushset we downloaded, paint inside the selection. You will have the following effect:

Step 5

Now we can fine-tune the image a bit. Firstly, we flatten the image (don’t forget to save a copy of the original before flatten it) and duplicate the background layer once, apply the following motion blur settings to the duplicate layer:

Now we come to the interesting part: change the blending mode of this duplicated layer to “Pin Light”, keep the opacity of this layer to 100%, and hit Ctrl + T and resize the duplicate layer as shown below:

Erase the edges of the duplicated layer.

You can see by doing so, we created a nice snowy/foggy to our icy text.

Now we can finalise the image by adding the following adjustment layers:

Curves

Hue/Saturation

Colour Balance

and here is the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

Super Sleek Text Effect with Water Drop Texture

Step 1

Firstly we can prepare some nice background for us to work on. Create a new document sized 1920 * 1080px with white colour background. On the background layer, use the Gradient Tool (G) to fill it with the followings:

Duplicate this background layer once, hit Ctrl + T and resize the duplicated layer as shown below:

In between the duplicated layer and the background layer, create a new layer call “Light bottom” and grab a big soft round brush with white colour (I chose 1600px, 0% hardness, 55% opacity), do a single-click on this newly-created layer on the position shown below:

Then on top of all previous layers, create a new layer called “light top” and use the same brushset for the “light bottom” layer, do a single-click to the following position as shown below:

You will have the following effect:

Step 2

Use the font we just downloaded, type some texts onto the document, resize (Ctrl + T) and position it in the centre of the canvas:

On the text layer, apply the following layer blending options:

Drop Shadow

Outer Glow

Gradient Overlay

And you will have the following effect so far:

Step 3

Load the water drop texture into Photoshop. Go back to our text document and load the selection of the text layer by using the following method:

1. Move your mouse over the thumbnail image of the text layer in the layer pallette: (You will notice your mouse cursor change into a hand)

2. Hold down the Ctrl key (the cursor will change into a hand + rectangular marquee) and left-click the thumbnail image of the text layer. You will see now the text layer is selected:

Once the text layer is selected, grab the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M), move your mouse over the selection until you see the cursor changes into the following shape:

Left-click and hold, drag the selection over the water drop texture:

Hit Ctrl + Alt + R and bring up the refine edge tool, apply the following settings:

Press Ctrl + C to copy the selected portion from the water drop texture, go back to our text document and Ctrl + V to paste the texture on top of the text layer:

(Important: please maintain this selection on the water drop image, we will use it again in the next step)

Name this layer as “water drop texture 1″ and change its blending mode to “Overlay”, you will have the following effect:

Step 4

To add a bit variety for the water drops, simply go back to the water drop texture image, move the selection to a different portion:

Again we copy and paste the selection back to our text document, name the newly-created layer as “water drop texture 2″, change the blending mode to “overlay”.

You will have the following effect:

Optional: you can add more water drops to the text by repeating the above steps.

Here is what I have after adding another two layers of water drop textures:

Step 5

To make the actual text stand out a bit more, simply duplicate the text layer once and drag the duplicated layer upon the top. Reduce the opacity of this duplicated text layer to around 70%.

You will have the following effect:

Add a new Levels adjustment layer by going to Layer > New adjustment Layer > Levels and apply the following settings:

Add the following mask to the Levels adjustment layer:

And you will have the this final effect: