Locked lesson.
About this lesson
While text is mostly seen in a solid state, few know that it can be transformed into a frozen form. Got that big ski trip to organize? Or want to add some ice to your presentation? This is the tutorial for you. Like always, the stuff you might learn along the way is pretty neat too.
Exercise files
Download the Photoshop file used in the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Frozen Text Effect.psd39.2 MB
Quick reference
Topic
Transform text into its frozen form.
When to use
While text is mostly seen in a solid state, few know that it can be transformed into a frozen form. Got that big ski trip to organize? Or want to add some ice to your presentation? This is the tutorial for you. Like always, the stuff you might learn along the way is pretty neat too.
Instructions
Icy backdrop
- Make background a dark blue
- Drop in an ice texture in a new layer and set Blend to Multiply
- Add Brightness and Contrast Adjustment Layer
- Clip to texture layer
- Decrease the brightness to -40, increase the contrast to 40
- Creating a new layer and with large soft white brush, add a dot to the centre and change the Blend Mode to soft light
Icy text
- Add new layer and text (suggested font: Trojan Pro)
- Bold and Color: light blue: 0c 86 ae
- Bevel And Emboss: Direction: Down, Size: 350, Style: Inner Bevel, Technique: Chisel Soft, Shadow Mode: Soft Light, Shadow Opacity: 45%, Altitude: 10, Gloss Contour: Half Round.
- Inner Glow: Blend Mode: Screen, Opacity: 55%, Size: 25
- Outer Glow: Blend Mode: Soft Light, Opacity: 100%, Size: 100, Color: white
Adding more texture to the text
- Bring in new ice texture image and clip it to the text layer: Hold ALT or Option and then place curser between the two layers
- Set Blend Mode to Hard Light
Adding a rough edge to the text
- With your Control key held down click on the Type Layer thumbnail to turn it into a selection.
- Add a Layer Mask
- Menu/Filter/Distort/Wave Distortion: triangular type, wavelength 70 and max
- Amplitude at 2
- 00:04 Hey everyone, Howard Pinsky here with a very cool Photoshop tutorial.
- 00:08 Today I will be showing you guys how to create a text effect that's similar to the
- 00:11 text in Disney's new movie, Frozen.
- 00:13 I'm not going to show you how to create the font, because I believe that's
- 00:17 copyrighted by Disney.
- 00:18 But I can show you how to create text that is similar, using layer styles
- 00:22 and textures. Let me show you exactly how this works.
- 00:25 This text effect is going to be composed using layer styles,
- 00:29 and some textures. I'll be using two textures which I grabbed from
- 00:32 Shutterstock.com.
- 00:34 Of course, if you don't have a Shutterstock account you can probably grab similar
- 00:37 free textures from CGtextures.com.
- 00:38 Starting off the background, this will set the
- 00:42 stage for our text, and a little bit of texture as well.
- 00:45 I'll start by filling in my background with a dark navy blue,
- 00:48 and then I’m going to add in one of my textures. Once the texture's in place,
- 00:53 to blend it in with the background, setting the blend mode to multiply
- 00:57 should dampen it down quite a bit. But I do want to strengthen up the contrast
- 01:00 just a little bit.
- 01:01 To do that, I'll add a brightness and contrast adjustment layer from the bottom
- 01:05 of the layers panel,
- 01:06 and then clip it to the texture layer by placing my cursor
- 01:09 in between the two layers, and then with my ALT or Option key held down, click.
- 01:12 Once the adjustment layer has been clipped to the texture,
- 01:16 I'll decrease the brightness to around -40 and then increase the contrast
- 01:21 to around +40. Finally, to finish off the background, I'll add a slight
- 01:26 highlight.
- 01:26 Creating one more new layer, I'll switch over to a large, soft white brush,
- 01:31 and then add a single spot around the top right corner of this document.
- 01:35 Now, obviously this is way too harsh. To blend in with the background, I can
- 01:40 change the blend mode to soft light,
- 01:42 and then decrease the opacity until I'm happy: perfect.
- 01:46 Now we can start with the text.
- 01:47 Like I mentioned, we're not going to be recreating the font that Disney used,
- 01:50 as I'm sure it was custom created for the movie. So, we're going to be using something
- 01:54 a little bit more generic.
- 01:55 Grabbing my type tool from the Tools bar on the left, the font I will be using will
- 01:59 be Trojan Pro:
- 02:00 set to bold and the color will be a lighter blue.
- 02:07 The color of
- 02:11 your text is very important, as the texture that we're about to add is going
- 02:14 to be interacting with it when we change the blend mode.
- 02:16 Now, once the properties are set, I'm going to type out the word frozen in the center of
- 02:21 this document.
- 02:21 Now, we can start applying a few layer styles to give our text a bit of shape.
- 02:26 The first one that we're going to be adding will be a bevel and emboss.
- 02:29 The style of the bevel will be kept at inner bevel,
- 02:32 but the technique will be changed to ‘chisel soft’, then setting the direction
- 02:36 to down
- 02:38 and maxing out the size will give us the shape that we’re looking for.
- 02:41 Next, down below under shading, to give our text a little bit of shine,
- 02:45 change the gloss contour to ‘half round’ and then pull it back a bit, just a touch,
- 02:50 by decreasing the altitude to 10 degrees
- 02:52 Finally, change the shadow mode to soft light
- 02:56 and then decrease the opacity to 45%.
- 02:59 Next, to add a bit of glow to the inside of the text,
- 03:03 we're going to be adding an inner glow. The blend mode can be kept at screen,
- 03:07 but decrease the opacity to around 55%, and then
- 03:11 increase the size until you see a nice, subtle glow on the inside the text:
- 03:15 around 25 pixels should do. Good. The last layer style we're going to be adding will be an
- 03:20 outer glow.
- 03:21 The blend mode will be switched over to soft light, the opacity will be increased
- 03:26 to 100%,
- 03:27 and the color will be set to white. Now, down below, crank
- 03:30 up the size to create a nice soft glow behind our text.
- 03:34 Perfect. Our layer styles are now complete. But, our texture isn't looking very
- 03:38 cold.
- 03:39 This is where our second texture comes into play. Let me hop over to the
- 03:42 document that contains my second texture.
- 03:44 I'm going to drag it right over to the text document, so it sits above our text
- 03:49 layer.
- 03:49 We need to clip it so it’s confined inside the text. Just like when we clipped
- 03:53 our adjustment layer to our texture,
- 03:55 hold your ALT or Option key and then place your cursor in between the two
- 03:59 layers and click.
- 03:59 Perfect. Finally, to blend in the texture a little bit better,
- 04:04 set the blend mode too hard light. That should give you a nice
- 04:07 vibrant look to your texture. That's looking quite a bit better,
- 04:10 but the edges of our text are looking a little bit too straight.
- 04:14 To deal with this, we'll be applying distortion to a layer mask.
- 04:18 So, with your computer Control key held down, click on your type layer's thumbnail
- 04:21 to turn it into a selection.
- 04:23 Then, add a layer mask at the bottom of the Layers panel. This will give us a
- 04:26 border to apply our filter to.
- 04:29 And now that the mask is in place, let’s add the wave distortion.
- 04:32 It is in the filter distort menu. In terms of the settings,
- 04:36 I found that using a triangular type gave me the best results,
- 04:39 with the generator set around 22, the max
- 04:42 wavelength to around 70, and the max amplitude at 2.
- 04:46 When you press OK, you're going to see that the edges of the text are now
- 04:50 cracked and chipped.
- 04:51 And because you applied this filter to a layer mask, you can add even more filters if you want
- 04:55 more cracks around the text.
- 04:56 Or, if you want to go back to your smooth text, you can disable the layer mask
- 04:59 quite easily.
- 05:01 And that does it. Your own frozen text effect in Photoshop, using layer styles
- 05:05 and a texture.
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