Candy Cane Text Effect

Quick reference

• 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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