Locked lesson.
About this lesson
Great for holiday themed messages and a good tool for creating stripes for other designs using the Define Texture feature.
Exercise files
Download the Photoshop file used in the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Candy Cane Text Effect.psd651.6 KB
Quick reference
Topic
A Candy Cane text style
When to use
Great for holiday themed messages and a good tool for creating stripes for other designs using the Define Texture feature.
Instructions
Create the texture
- New document: 100 by 100 pixels.
- Transparent background
- Make sure Snap is turned on under the View Menu
- Drag out the guide from the left hand side to the centre
- Use rectangular tool to create central stripe (use Snap to help)
- Set color to medium red
- Holding down your ALT or Option key drag this rectangle to the edge of your document.
- Make sure that the shape is halfway off the document (use Snap)
- Change color slightly
- Duplicate this image for other side
- Save this pattern via Edit Menu at the top and then down to Define Pattern.
Create the text and add pattern
- New document: 700 by 500 pixels.
- Pick a thick font for best results, and add text
- Under Tools Bar grab the Paint Bucket
- Change the source from foreground to pattern
- Use Pattern Picker dropdown to find the saved pattern
- Click in a new layer
- Right click the pattern layer and choose ‘Clipping Mask’
- Rotate pattern layer (Command- or Control-T shortcut)
Add layer styles
- Stroke: Size: 2,Color: light Red,
- Drop Shadow, Color: green, Opacity: 45%, Distance: 6, Size: 1, Contour: Cone Shape.
- Bevel And Emboss: Depth: 50, Size: 12, Global Light: off, Altitude: 70°, Highlight Opacity: 100%, Shadow Opacity: 20%
Tip
To pull the text away from the background, add a drop shadow.
- Angle: 90 degrees, Distance: 4, Size: 6
- 00:04 Hey everyone. To continue with this months holiday-themed tutorials, we're going to
- 00:07 be creating some candy cane text.
- 00:08 The first thing we are going to do is create the
- 00:12 candy cane
- 00:13 texture which is going to wrap around our text. Go ahead and create a new document with
- 00:17 the dimensions 100 by 100 pixels,
- 00:20 with a transparent background. To ensure that our patterns tile properly,
- 00:25 go and make sure that ‘snap’ is turned on under the View menu at the top:
- 00:29 you'll see why in a moment. I'm also going to drag out a guide,
- 00:33 to find the center of the document. If you don't see your rulers on the top and the
- 00:37 left hand side, use the Command or Control
- 00:39 R shortcut key, and then drag out the guide from the left hand side.
- 00:43 Selecting a Rectangle tool from the Tools bar on the left,
- 00:46 set the color of the shape to a nice medium red.
- 00:51 Once the color is set, drag your rectangle to the middle of your document.
- 00:55 Now, as long as you made sure that snap was turned on, your rectangle should snap
- 00:59 to the middle of the guide when you position it.
- 01:01 Now that the rectangle's in place, we need two more. Holding down your
- 01:04 ALT or Option key, drag this rectangle to the edge of your document.
- 01:08 if we were to place it right here, we'd have pretty ugly results when we go to
- 01:12 tile this pattern,
- 01:13 so we need to place this rectangle halfway off our document.
- 01:17 Dragging it off the edge, as long as snap is turned on,
- 01:21 you should see the middle of the rectangle snap to the edge of this document.
- 01:25 That's exactly what we're looking for. When it's in place, I'm going to change the
- 01:29 color of this rectangle to be a touch more vibrant,
- 01:32 to give us some variation to our pattern. Now, after that's complete,
- 01:36 duplicate this rectangle over to the opposite side of the document, making
- 01:40 sure that it snaps into place.
- 01:41 Good. Now our pattern is complete. It may look quite boring right now, but once we apply
- 01:46 some layer styles to it, it'll
- 01:48 spice it up a little bit. Now, to save this pattern, head up to the
- 01:51 Edit menu at the top and then down to Define Pattern.
- 01:55 Go ahead and give it a name. I named this ‘candy cane’. Good. Now we're ready to
- 01:59 create our text.
- 02:00 The size of the document is completely up to you: I'm going to go ahead and work with
- 02:03 the 700 by 500 pixel document.
- 02:05 Let's start by adding our text. With the Type tool selected,
- 02:09 pick your font of choice. I'm using a font with nice rounded edges.
- 02:13 ’Pooplatter’ looks like a good choice: perfectly fitting for the holiday season.
- 02:18 As for the font color, I'm going to go with a mostly white, followed with a
- 02:21 slight touch of red.
- 02:23 Now, type your word in the centre of the document. The size of the font is completely up to
- 02:27 you, but remember, you'll definitely need to tweak the
- 02:29 layer styles in order to get the result you are looking for for
- 02:32 different font sizes.
- 02:33 Now the text is ready to go, let's add our pattern.
- 02:37 Under the Tools bar, grab the ‘paint bucket’ tool and then, at the top,
- 02:41 change the source from ‘foreground’ to ‘pattern’.
- 02:44 You should see a drop down appear to the right, which will give us access to the
- 02:48 new pattern that we just created a moment ago,
- 02:50 which should be at the bottom of this list. When you have your pattern selected,
- 02:54 create a new layer in the Layers panel and fill it with our new pattern by
- 02:58 clicking anywhere inside the document.
- 02:59 Now, there are two ways of placing our pattern inside the text: we can
- 03:04 use layer masks or we can use clipping.
- 03:05 Because we're going to be rotating our pattern, and possibly moving
- 03:09 it,
- 03:10 let's go with the clipping route. On the new layer that contains a pattern,
- 03:14 right click on it in the layers panel and then choose ‘create clipping mask’.
- 03:17 This will place our pattern inside our text.
- 03:21 What's nice about clipping masks is that we can rotate or even move our pattern, even
- 03:25 after it's been clipped.
- 03:26 Go ahead and enter free transform mode with your Command- or Control-T shortcut,
- 03:31 and then rotate the pattern until you are happy with it.
- 03:34 I want to stay away from the completely vertical look.
- 03:36 Now, some of you may be happy with this result here, a nice flat
- 03:39 looking candy cane style text, but I'm going to go a little bit further with this
- 03:43 design.
- 03:44 Let's add a few layer styles, starting with our pattern.
- 03:47 On this layer, let's start by adding a stroke to soften up the harsh edges of our
- 03:51 pattern.
- 03:52 Basically, I'm going to use a light red ,which will go around the edges of our
- 03:55 pattern.
- 03:56 If we leave the edges too sharp, the pattern can be quite distracting.
- 04:00 Setting the size at 2 should do the trick. The last style we're going to add is a
- 04:04 drop shadow. Now, we're not going to be adding this drop shadow to give our
- 04:07 pattern some
- 04:08 depth: we're actually going to be introducing a third color to the mix.
- 04:12 I'm going to add a subtle green line to my pattern.
- 04:15 You may want to turn down the opacity, so the green isn't too strong: I'll pop it
- 04:18 around 45%.
- 04:20 Now, down below: change the distance to 6 and the size to 1.
- 04:24 The important setting is the contour. Right now, our green line is attached to
- 04:28 the red lines.
- 04:29 I'd prefer if it had some separation. Changing the contour to 'Cone' should do
- 04:33 the trick.
- 04:34 Perfect, our pattern is complete again. You're free to stop here if you happy,
- 04:38 but I'm going to add two more layer styles to my text layers, starting
- 04:41 with bevel and emboss. In the structure section, we're going to keep the
- 04:45 style and technique at the default settings,
- 04:48 but change the depth to 50 and the size to 12.
- 04:52 Now, under shading, turn off global light and then change the angle to 90 and the
- 04:56 altitude to 70 degrees.
- 04:59 Increase the highlight opacity to 100%, and decrease the shadow
- 05:03 opacity to 20%.
- 05:04 This should leave you with a nice shiny looking effect.
- 05:08 Now remember, like I mentioned earlier,
- 05:10 if you're working with the larger or smaller font, you will probably have to tweak
- 05:13 the settings that we just went over
- 05:14 to get a nice result.
- 05:16 And finally, to pull the text away from the background, go ahead and add a drop
- 05:20 shadow.
- 05:21 Nothing special in terms of settings - 25% for the opacity,
- 05:24 90 degrees for the angle, 4 and 6 for the distance and size.
- 05:28 And that should do it. You now – hopefully - have text that looks like a
- 05:32 candy cane.
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