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About this lesson

This is another great tutorial to sharpen up your skills in layer styles, metallic effects, lighting effects and depth… Besides, who doesn’t want to add a little magic to the desktop every now and then?

Exercise files

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Quick reference

Topic

Create text in the style of the Harry Potter movie posters.

When to use

This is another great tutorial to sharpen up your skills in layer styles, metallic effects, lighting effects and depth… Besides, who doesn’t want to add a little magic to the desktop every now and then?

Instructions

Create some text and layer styles

  • Use a large thick font.
  • Layer Styles:
    • Gradient Overlay: Gradient Color Left: Neon Green, Gradient Color Right: 9e 9e 9e,
    • Bevel And Emboss: Global Light: Off, Depth: 200, Size: 30, Angle: 40, Style: Inner Bevel, Technique: Chisel Hard, Highlight Mode: Overlay, Shadow Mode: Linear Burn, Highlight Opacity: color e4d0e7, Shadow Opacity: color 522213, Altitude: 58:
    • Texture section: select Rusted metal texture: Scale: 100%, Depth: 30%
    • Inner Shadow: Blend Mode: Overlay, Global Light: Off, Size: 15, Angle: 180, Distance: 10, Color: white,
    • Satin: Blend Mode: Linear Burn, Opacity: 45%, Size: 40, Distance: 100, Color: 4c 51 61,
    • Inner Glow: Blend Mode: Overlay, Opacity: 35%, Color: white,

 

 

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  • 00:04 LIke many of my other text effect tutorials,
  • 00:07 this will become completely composed of layer styles,
  • 00:09 which means you can easily change the wording
  • 00:11 later on without messing up the effect too much.
  • 00:14 As you're following along at home, keep in mind
  • 00:16 that depending on the size and the font of
  • 00:18 your text, you will definitely need to adjust some
  • 00:21 of the settings that I show in this video.
  • 00:23 Let's begin.
  • 00:24 Once you have your text typed out, let's start by adding our layer styles.
  • 00:28 Hop up to the top, go to Layer >
  • 00:30 Layer Styles, and then we'll start with a Gradient Overlay.
  • 00:34 As for the colors, we're gonna keep it super simple and use a two color gradient.
  • 00:38 The left color is going to be a neutral grey.
  • 00:41 I'm going to use the value 9e9e9e, and the right is going to be
  • 00:47 a lighter grey with a touch of blue, e6e6e9.
  • 00:53 Perfect.
  • 00:54 And that's all for the gradient.
  • 00:55 Nice and simple.
  • 00:56 Next is going to be the Bevel and Emboss.
  • 00:59 This will help give our text some shape and texture.
  • 01:02 We're going to keep this style at Inner
  • 01:04 Bevel but change the technique to Chisel Hard.
  • 01:08 Depth is going to be set to 200 and Size is 30.
  • 01:11 Now down into our shading, go ahead and turn off Global
  • 01:15 Light and change the angle to 40 and the altitude to 58.
  • 01:20 For the Highlight mode, let's switch it over to
  • 01:22 Overlay and set the color to a nice light orange.
  • 01:26 I'm gonna choose e4d0c7.
  • 01:30 This will give a slight tint to our highlights.
  • 01:33 Opacity can remain at 75%.
  • 01:35 For the shadow mode, let's use Linear Burn, and this time we're
  • 01:41 going to change the color to a darker orange, 522213.
  • 01:46 Opacity for the shadow we'll bump all the way to a 100%.
  • 01:49 Again a quick reminder, if you're text is larger or smaller than mine,
  • 01:53 you'll probably have to change some of the settings that we just went over.
  • 01:56 Let's move on and add a contour.
  • 01:58 When the contour is added, I'm going to
  • 02:00 simply increase the value to 58%, that's all.
  • 02:03 Now the texture is where our text will get the stone feel to it.
  • 02:07 From the drop down menu, select the Rusted Metal texture.
  • 02:10 It's the red one, right here.
  • 02:12 Keep the scale at 100% but change the depth to 30%.
  • 02:16 Good, it's starting to come along pretty nicely, but
  • 02:19 we need to add some more color to the side.
  • 02:21 To do this, let's add an inner shadow.
  • 02:24 For the Blend Mode, we're going to choose Overlay, with pure white for
  • 02:28 the color, and we're gonna crank the Opacity all the way to 100%.
  • 02:32 Now because our bevel's shadow has a red tint to it, this
  • 02:35 inner shadow will really help bring some of that color back into focus.
  • 02:39 And we want the color to be coming directly from the left hand side.
  • 02:42 So go ahead and turn off Global Light, and change the angle to 180 degrees.
  • 02:47 Change the Distance to 10 and the Size to 15.
  • 02:50 This will really soften up the color quite a bit.
  • 02:54 Good, now that we have some red peeking in through the
  • 02:56 side, we also need to dirty up the text a little bit.
  • 02:59 Sure, we could do this using grunge brushes, but we want
  • 03:02 to try and keep the effect 100% editable in the future.
  • 03:06 Let's try out a satin.
  • 03:09 Here, let's go ahead and change the Blend Mode to
  • 03:11 Linear Burn, and let's choose a dark greyish-blue type color.
  • 03:15 I'm going to use the value 4C5161.
  • 03:19 We don't want the dirt to overpower the
  • 03:20 text, so let's use an Opacity of around 45%.
  • 03:24 At the moment it's quite sharp, so what were gonna do
  • 03:27 is change the Distance to 100, and the Size to 40.
  • 03:31 Perfect.
  • 03:32 The last layer style I'm going to add will be an inner glow.
  • 03:35 This will give a slight glow to some of the dull edges of the text.
  • 03:39 Change the Blend Mode to Overlay, the Opacity
  • 03:42 to 35% and choose pure white for the color.
  • 03:45 Everything else could be left alone.
  • 03:47 And that's that, Harry Potter text in Photoshop using only layer styles.

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