Photoshop tutorial: Simple dark but vivid text effect
Under: design » Photoshop tutorials
In this tutorial we’re going to create a very simple text
effect. A dark, colorful text effect. We will use the “the
maple origins font” found at dafont.com.
Start by creating an empty file with a black background. Create
a new layer and write something on it (White text). Rasterize and
duplicate the layer. Now you should have the black background,
layer 1 and layer 2 both with your text on them. Hide layer 2 and
select layer 1:
Now go Layer -> Layer Style -> Gradient
Overlay and create a Gradient like the image below using
the Hex Values for colors as the ones below:
Apply the gradient and stay on the same layer. Now go to
Filters -> Blur -> Motion Blur set the
Angle to 0 (zero) and the Distance to 50
pixels. Apply the effect and duplicate the layer. You must
end up with something like this:
and have the following layers:
Select the second layer from bottom (the one after the
background) and go to Filters -> Distort -
Waves and set the following values:
Note: The dimensions of my PSD is 500px X
300px and the Wave filter with these settings produce the following
effect. You may have to experiment a little in order to get the
same effect for higher dimensions.
Apply the effect, duplicate the layer and flip the new
layer vertically. The result should be something like the
image below:
Now, let’s reveal our top layer which is the white rasterized
text and set it’s blend mode to Overlay. So, your
layers now should be like that:
and your PSD should look like:
We are getting there. Having the top layer selected go
Layer -> New Adjustment Layer ->
Hue/Saturation and press ok. Set the Hue value at
+34, the Saturation value at +56 and
leave the Lighting setting at zero. Press ok and you should have
something like this:
Duplicate our top layer (white text) and set the Blend
Mode to Overlay. By setting higher values to the
Hue/Saturation adjustment layer we can get the following
result.
And that’s it. My point in this tutorial is the smooth pastel
colors that we used in the beginning which gave us more control of
the Hue/Saturation values. It’s much easier for this kind of
effects to go from soft colors to vivid ones rather the other way
around.