Another Text Effect

Tutorial 2 - another cool text effect without plugins

This is a simple and useful technique for making rich, 3-D looking text. The font used for this tutorial is SNELL, and you should be able to find it somewhere on the web. Feel free to use any font you desire as this technique works with just about anything.

NOTE: This tutorial assumes you have a working knowledge of Photoshop 5. If you do not, you MUST learn Photoshop's tools and be pretty familiar with the program before attempting this tutorial. While this is a pretty simple text effect, it might be extremely difficult for those who do not know Photoshop's tools.

	STEP 1.) Begin by creating a text layer with RGB values of 115, 34, 72, and place above a background layer with RGB values of 50, 77, 78. Once you learn this technique, you can use any colors you wish, but for right now, let's stick to the same colors I'm working with.
	STEP 2.) Create a new layer below the 1st layer, SELECT the first layer (CTRL + click on layer), and FILL the selection (on your new layer) with RGB values of 102, 177, 253. Now DESELECT (CTRL + D) and use the arrow keys to nudge this bluish layer over a couple of pixels and up one pixel. We've now created a bluish edge that's starting to give our flat text some dimension as it appears that light is striking it from above left.
	STEP 3.) Repeat STEP 2 only fill with black instead of blue, and offset a couple of pixels to the right and one pixel down. This creates a shadow effect and really gives our text a 3-D appearance.
	STEP 4.) Repeat step 2 again, only make this the uppermost layer and fill with RGB values of 36, 228, 243.
	STEP 5.) Be sure you have the layer in STEP 4 selected (CTRL + Click on layer) and then apply a GAUSSIAN BLUR of 4 pixels. By keeping the layer selected, the blur is constrained to the inside of the selection, and this produces some interesting effects. As you can see, we now have a soft, shaded quality to our text.
	STEP 6.) The last step is to create a drop shadow. To do this, create a new layer above the background layer, select the text layer, and fill the new layer with black and apply a gaussian blur of 3 pixels. Nudge it down and to the right a few pixels to create a nice shadow. This makes the text appear to float over the background. We now have a very smooth, professional looking text effect without using plugins, and we can adjust colors on each layer to customize to our liking.
	You might think that since we have a drop shadow, we don't really need the black shadow layer in step 3, but it does give the outside edge a bit of sharpness, so I suggest you use when using this particular font. Tip: try adjusting the HUE/SATURATION slider on different layers and see what colors you can come up with. ;)