Quick Gold Text
There
are a lot of ways to make “gold” text. This one makes use of two layers
with the exact same text on it. They are layered on top of each other
with the bottom layer a few pixels down so that it gives an illusion of 3
dimenions.
The font we’re using here is Trajan—a very elegant typeface that suits gold text.
First
the top layer, which is made with the usual suspects—a bevel, a
gradient overlay, and so on. Note the faint drop shadow that actually
gets applied to the layer below it (which then has its own drop shadow).
This
is the layer that gives the depth to our letters. Notice that the
interior bit is not important because it gets covered by our gold
plating layer above. It uses an Outer Bevel on top of a fat Stroke to
create the highlights. Then when we place the other layer on top they
come together to make a lovely gold effect!
There are a lot of ways to make “gold” text. This one makes use of two layers.
3D Metallic Text
This
effect is actually just a variation on the gold text. As you can see
below, we’ve again used the dual copies of the text, each with layer
styles applied. Here I used a different Gloss Contour on the beveled
text below, and of course everywhere we used a yellow shade in the last
effect, I used a grey color here.
To
try something slightly different, I also applied a text warp. You can
do this by clicking on to the text layer, selecting the Horizontal Type
Tool (T) and then an icon appears at the top (shown below) that you
click on. This gives the Warp Text dialog box.
Now if you apply a Bulge to one of the layers, but not the other, you get a slight distortion that looks neat.
DoubleType
This effect is
much
simpler and just relies on having two versions of the text, one styled
and one not. I’ve used Futura as my typeface here. I believe I saw this
effect on a movie poster once so I’ve used red the way they did, but it
works just as well with other colors and combinations.
All there is to do is apply two bits of layer styling:
- Add
a 1px Outer Stroke using a gradient instead of a color. I’ve used one
of Photoshop’s metallic gradients (see the thin metal style further down
for more details). It gives the edges a shiny quality that’s nice.
- Then
we add a black to white Gradient Overlay to the text set to Overlay and
50%. This means when you change the text color it automatically adjusts
so it has a nice bit of shading over the top.
HyperColor
This effect I discovered at
Chris Garrett Media‘s
site where he uses it to great effect. It’s a very simple effect
really, you just grab some text (typeface is DIN in this example) and
give it a Gradient Overlay. Photoshop has some really nice Color Harmony
gradients that you can add by clicking on that little arrow that points
to the right on the Gradient Editor dialog box. The gradients it adds
are the bunch at the bottom. If you choose one of those and set it to
about 59% on white text, set on a dark background.
Thin Metal
This
is the simplest way to make a metallic effect. It relies on the fact
that when you see metal in real life, it’s usually got lots of
highlights and shadows, especially shinier, chromier type metals. So by
using two copies of the same gradient at different angles you can make
this effect happen really easily and give your text a metallic effect.
It’s
best on a thin typeface because otherwise the interior of the text
looks dull and flat (unless of course we added more styling, but then it
wouldn’t be super quick!)
So
first of all I decided to make my text ‘stand up’ in this example. So
just create a layer below your text and draw tiny circles of black below
the points of each letter. Then blur them by going to Filters > Blur
> Gaussian Blur and set it to about 2px. Then hit Ctrl+T and squash
them vertically. Finally set them to about 30% Opacity so they are nice
and faded out.
For letters like the
a and
e
where there is a larger area of the letter touching the ‘floor’, you can
use the transform tool to stretch the circle our horizontally.
Finally I duplicated one of my circle shadows and stretched it
waay out so that it went underneath the whole bit of text to make the overall shadow.
Experiment and you should be able to create some neat little pools of shadow under the letters.
Now the actual text is just a combination of a Gradient Overlay and a 1px Stroke that uses the
same
gradient. The gradient we use (and it’s the same as in the Double Type
effect above) is a metallic gradient that comes with Photoshop. You can
add this to your gradients palette, using that little right arrow shown
in the Gradient Editor below, then choose Metals and you should see it
appear.
The key here is to make sure the Angle on the overlay and
the stroke is different. This is what creates the highlights on the text
that you can see in the close up screenshot above.
I also set the
main overlay to just 14% Opacity over the top of some grey text so that
it was a little faded out, but that’s optional.
Plastic Fantastic
I
love these gel-type text styles, though I must admit I don’t think I’ve
ever actually used one in a real design. But who cares, they are so fun
to make. This one uses two copies of the text and two different layer
styles (similar to our first two metal texts earlier).
You can see
the two layers below. The main styling is done in the bottom layer,
while the top one is used to create that shine effect.
In
the bottom layer we’ve used a bunch of glows, altered shadows, and
gradient overlays. You can see the actual settings further below.
In
this layer I’ve heavily modified a Bevel and Emboss style to create
that sharp-edged highlight. Again, you can see the exact settings,
including the shape of the gradient contour below.
Digg
Edit:
For some reason when I submitted the link to Digg, it doesn’t seem to
have sync’ed up, anyhow so here’s the *real* digg bookmarklet
thing-a-me-bob:
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