Locked lesson.
About this lesson
This tutorial is great for showing you how to give depth and substance to your text design, and how the Bevel and Emboss style effect can really make a difference. Also… yum!
Exercise files
Download the Photoshop file used in the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Chocolate Text Effect.psd3.7 MB
Quick reference
Topic
Make text look like it is covered by chocolate frosting.
When to use
This tutorial is great for showing you how to give depth and substance to your text design, and how the Bevel and Emboss style effect can really make a difference. Also… yum!
Instructions
New document and text
- Start with a 1280 by 720 pixel document
- Add a simple pink and purple radial background
- Create text (thick fonts look best): Color: Brown: 2d 1b 07
Add layer styles to make chocolate text
- Bevel And Emboss: Global Light: Off, Depth: 500, Size: 20, Angle: 120, Highlight Opacity: 50%, Shadow Opacity: 50%, Altitude: 50, Gloss Contour: Rounded Steps,
- Contour: Rounded Steps, Range 20%
- Texture: waffle pattern, Depth: 3%
- Inner Shadow: Blend Mode: Overlay, Opacity: 100%, Global Light: Off, Direction: 3, Size: 10, Distance: 90, Color: white, Chock: 35%,
- Drop Shadow: Blend Mode: Multiply, Opacity: 40%, Global Light: Off, Size: 15, Angle: 90, Distance: 10.
Make frosting
- Duplicate the text layer
- Clear Layer Styles by right clicking and choose clear layer styles option
- Change color to dd 4f a2
- With a rectangular marquee tool select the top half of text
- Apply a Layer Mask
- Select Layer Mask: Menu/Filter/Distort/ ZigZag; amount 20, ridges 5
- Bevel And Emboss: Depth: 300, Size: 10, Highlight Mode: Overlay, Shadow Mode: Overlay, Highlight Opacity: 100%, Soften: 16
- Texture: rusted metal, Depth: 300%
- Inner Shadow: Blend Mode: Soft Light, Opacity: 40%, Global Light: Off, Size: 8, Angle: 0, Distance: 5, Soften: 16, Chock: 20%.
- 00:04 So in this Photoshop tutorial we are gonna be creating this delicious chocolate text
- 00:08 effect using layer styles and a little bit of masking.
- 00:11 Of course it can be used for Valentine's Day, but my birthday's more important.
- 00:14 Let's go ahead and begin.
- 00:15 As for the size of the document, it's really up to you.
- 00:18 It can vary depending on the screen resolution and personal preference.
- 00:22 For this tutorial, I'm gonna be starting with a 1280
- 00:25 by 720 pixel document with a very simple pink and purple radial background.
- 00:30 Now, as for the text for
- 00:31 a design like this as well as many text effects a thicker font is usually best.
- 00:36 Thick fonts give you more room to work with when applying layer styles.
- 00:40 I'm gonna be using the Bubbly Body font, which I fond over at Dafont.com and
- 00:44 then I can type out my word of choice in the center of my document.
- 00:47 Now I'm gonna be using a brown font which can act as a base for the chocolate text.
- 00:52 The value I'm gonna be using is 2D, 1B, 07, and
- 00:57 once you've gone ahead and typed out your text of choice, let's go ahead and
- 01:00 apply some layer styles by double-clicking on the layer in the Layers panel.
- 01:04 Let's start with a Bevel & Emboss to give our text a little bit of shape.
- 01:08 Starting up in the Structure section,
- 01:10 we're gonna keep the Style at Inner Bevel, keep the Technique at Smooth, but
- 01:13 we're gonna increase the Depth to 500% and then the size to 20 pixels.
- 01:19 This will give our text a really deep shape, and
- 01:21 once we combine it with some contours, it'll really look nice.
- 01:25 Next, down below under Shading, turn off Global Light,
- 01:28 keep the Angle at 120 degrees, but change the Altitude to 50 degrees.
- 01:33 Next to adjust the lighting a little bit more,
- 01:35 we're gonna change the Gloss Contour to the rounded steps contour.
- 01:39 And then down below we're gonna decrease the Opacity of both the Highlight Mode and
- 01:43 the Shadow Mode to 50% each.
- 01:45 Good, the next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna add a contour to
- 01:48 the bevel which is gonna add a little bit more shape to our text.
- 01:51 In the Contour picker go ahead and
- 01:53 select the Gaussian contour and then decrease the Range to around 20%.
- 01:57 Of course you can
- 01:57 experiment with this value until you get a shape that you'd like.
- 02:01 Finally, to finish off the Bevel let's go ahead and add a Texture.
- 02:04 When you active your texture go ahead and
- 02:05 open up the Pattern picker and you're gonna wanna select the Waffle pattern.
- 02:09 This is one of the default patterns that comes with Photoshop but
- 02:12 if you don't see it in your list, click on the gear icon at the top right corner,
- 02:16 select Patterns, and then press Append to add them to the bottom of your list or
- 02:20 OK to replace them completely.
- 02:21 And, finally, just so
- 02:22 it's not too overpowering, go ahead and decrease the Depth to around 3%, good.
- 02:27 The next layer style that we're gonna be adding will be an Inner Shadow,
- 02:30 just to give a little bit of a highlight at the top of our text.
- 02:33 Once you've added the Inner Shadow change the Blend Mode to Overlay,
- 02:37 change the Color to White, and then increase the Opacity to 100%.
- 02:41 Next, turn off Global Light and change the Angle to 90%.
- 02:45 Set the distance at 3 pixels, the choke at 35% and the size to 10 pixels, perfect.
- 02:52 Now to finish off the layer styles let's go ahead and
- 02:55 add a Drop Shadow to pull the text away from the background a little bit.
- 02:58 We're gonna keep the Blend Mode and Multiply, but decrease the Opacity to 40%.
- 03:02 Again, turn off Global Light and set the Angle at 90 degrees.
- 03:06 Set the Distance at 10 pixels, and the Size at 15 pixels.
- 03:11 And that'll do it for these layer styles.
- 03:13 Now, if you're only looking for
- 03:14 a chocolate text effect, you can probably stop here.
- 03:16 But to spice it up a little bit, or to swing it up a little bit,
- 03:19 we're gonna add a little bit of frosting over top of the text.
- 03:22 And to do that we wanna start by duplicating the layer that we
- 03:25 just worked on.
- 03:26 You can very quickly do that with your Cmd+J or Ctrl+J shortcut.
- 03:30 And once that's done you wanna clear the layer styles completely.
- 03:33 So right-click on your layer in your Layers panel and
- 03:35 choose the Clear Layer Style's option.
- 03:37 And once that's done, we wanna change the color of this text to a nice bright pink.
- 03:42 The value I'm gonna be using will be DD, 4F, A2.
- 03:46 Now, once that's done, before we start adding the layer styles,
- 03:50 we're gonna be adding a layer mask to exclude part of the frosting.
- 03:53 We only want it on the top quarter of the text.
- 03:56 So with your rectangular marquee tool active, go ahead and
- 03:58 create a selection around the part of the frosting that you want to keep.
- 04:02 Again, I'm gonna select the top quarter of our text.
- 04:05 And when that's been done, go ahead and
- 04:06 apply a layer mask, using the icon at the bottom of layers panel.
- 04:09 That'll hide everything that was not selected.
- 04:12 Perfect, now in its current shape, it's a little bit too straight.
- 04:15 So we want to add a filter to the layer mask to give it a little bit of curves.
- 04:19 So to do that, make sure the layer mask is selected.
- 04:21 You should see a white box surrounding the layer mask, and once you do, head up
- 04:25 to the Filter menu, down to Distort, and then choose the Zigzag filter.
- 04:30 And once the filter's visible, go ahead and set the amount at around 20,
- 04:32 the ridges at 5, and make sure the style is set to Pond Ripples.
- 04:37 And when you press OK,
- 04:38 you're gonna see nice curves on our frosting, no more straight lines.
- 04:42 And now we can go ahead and add some layer styles.
- 04:44 Let's start again with the Bevel and Emboss.
- 04:46 Once again we're gonna keep the Style at Inner Bevel.
- 04:49 We're gonna keep the Technique at Smooth, but
- 04:51 we're gonna increase the Depth to around 300%, the Size to 10 pixels and
- 04:56 we're gonna crank up the Soften all the way to 16 pixels.
- 05:00 Now down below we're gonna keep the Angle, the Altitude and
- 05:02 the Gloss Contour as the default, but we're gonna change the Highlight Mode, and
- 05:07 the Shadow Mode, both to Overlay.
- 05:08 And once that's done,
- 05:09 we're gonna increase the Opacity of the Highlight Mode up to 100%.
- 05:13 Good, the next thing that we're gonna do, is we're gonna add a Texture, just so
- 05:15 our frosting's not that flat.
- 05:17 Many textures would probably work for this layer, but I'm gonna go ahead and
- 05:20 choose the Rusted Metal texture, and
- 05:22 then I'm gonna decrease the Depth to around negative 300%.
- 05:26 Finally, to finish this off, let's go ahead and
- 05:28 add an Inner Shadow to the bottom of our frosting.
- 05:30 Change the Blend Mode to Soft Light, decrease the Opacity to around 40%,
- 05:35 turn off Global Light and set the Angle at negative 90 degrees.
- 05:40 Set the Distance at 5 pixels, the Choke at 20% and the Size to 8 pixels.
- 05:46 And that should leave you with a pretty delicious looking chocolate text effect
- 05:50 ready for my birthday, okay, Valentine's Day, whatever you wanna celebrate.
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