Text Gone 3-D – How to Create That Effect in Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop provides the tools graphic designers, artists, and web designers need to create striking and unique images. Since Photoshop hit the market, these techniques, which once were used exclusively by trained professionals, became accessible to the even amateur users. Of the many effects Photoshop allows its users to create, 3-D text is one of the most popular applications. It’s not hard to do; you just need to follow the right steps.

To get started, open a new document in Photoshop, and make it the right size for the text you want to produce. Decide what color you want your final text to be, and open the Color Picker tool. Select a color that is the same shade as you want your final color to be, only brighter – for instance, if you want your final product to be medium red, choose light red to start the process. Now, select your background color by clicking on “background” and clicking on a color. Choose one that is a shade darker than you want your final color to be.

Now it is time to start typing. Open the Type tool, and type all the words you want to make 3-D. Once are done typing, select all of your text by holding the “control” key, while you click on the text. Now hide this layer of the text.

Once you have hidden that layer of text, you want to select “create a new layer.” Hold the “control” and “alt” keys down, and the text will fill with your foreground color. Select that text, and create yet another new layer. In this layer, you want to add a seamless texture. You can create your own texture or search online for downloadable textures.  When you have your texture, click “edit”, then “define pattern,” and then “fill.”

Keep that top layer selected and open the opacity slider from the layers palette. Set the slider at the opacity you want; usually 50% or 60% works well, but the choice is yours, depending on how dark you want your final product to be.

Now you need to add some gradient. Create another new layer and open the gradient tool. Drag the tool from the top of the layer to the bottom, to cover the whole layer with gradient. Now re-open the opacity slider and drag that across the gradient. This will make the texture behind the gradient visible to viewers.

You now need to add drop shadow to your text. Make a new layer and place it under your text. Open the Feather tool, and set the level for your shadow, depending on how dark you want it to be. Now go to “foreground color” and color your shadow black.  You will need to experiment with the shade of the shadow and move it around under your text to get the right balance; this can only be done by trial and error. Lastly, adjust the opacity of your shadow using the opacity slider until it looks realistic and not too dark – like the shadow cast by a 3-D object.

With this step, the basics of a 3-D text design are complete. Now you can experiment with adding effects onto the text. Open the layer style menu and try out different options until you achieve the look you are going for.

You can use the basic steps that were applied to making 3-D text here to making other objects and images 3-D in Photoshop. Once you get the hang of the program, you will be able to experiment and see what works best for you.

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