3D text tutorial

In this tutorial you will learn how to make ‘real’ 3d text in Photoshop. After following this tutorial your text wil look like this:

Create a new document. Tip: The bigger your image, the nicer your effect will look. Use the text tool to create your text. You can make the text big and choose a bold/big font like Impact. Give your background and text some color (but don’t use the blending options).

Now rasterize your text layer (rightmouse on layer -> rasterize type). Then transform. To do this press Ctrl + t. Now click with your right mouse button on your text and select “Perspective”. Drag one of the upper corners to the left.

Select your text layer and press Alt + Up Arrow about 10 times. This wil duplicate the current layer and move it one pixel up. The more you press it the more depth your text will have. Rename the top layer to “top”.

Now rename the bottom layer to “blur”. Contract all the layers between the “top” and “blur” layer. To do this select a layer and press Ctrl + e to contract it with the layer below. Do this until your layers look like this. I renamed the contracted layers to “3d”:

Now choose the blending options for the top layer (click with your right mousebutton on the top layer and choose Blending Options). Add bevel and emboss with these settings:

Add a gradient overlay for a better result:

Enable a color overlay:

Now it’s time to add a kind of reflection. Select the “blur” layer and apply the motion blur filter to it (Filter -> Blur -> Motion blur). Use these settings:

Let’s add a glossy effect to the text! Start with making a new layer. Name it “gloss”. Use the Elliptical Marquee tool to make this selection:

Press Ctrl + Shift + i to inverse your selection. Fill it with a white color.

Now hold Ctrl while clicking the thumb image of the “top” layer in your layer window. Then press Ctrl + Shift + i and press delete. You will end up with something like this:

Change the opacity of your gloss layer to 30%. Add a layer mask. To do this select your “gloss” layer and press the 3th icon from the left at the bottom of your layer panel.

Time for the final step! Use the gradient tool (white and black as your colors) to draw a gradient on the layer mask. This will make a part of your gloss transparent. This should be your final result:

You can view my wallpapers made with this effect here. Thanks for following my tutorial! Feel free to show your results.