There is a lot of typography-based artwork recently with more people
getting their hands on 3D programs. However, creating 3D text with just
Photoshop takes a certain amount craftsmanship and skills, leaving all
the little details in your hands instead of letting the computer do all
the work. So, in this tutorial we are going to take a few 2D textures as
well as a few Photoshop techniques to create a realistic 3D text image.
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Resources
Wood Texture by kovik
Wooden Plank by Image*After
Red Brick Wall by Image*After
Lonely Tree by Image*After
Step 1: Sizing the document
Let’s start off by opening up Photoshop and creating a new document with a size of 1200x600px.
Step 2: Sizing Our wood image
Open up our
Wood Texture
image in Photoshop and go into Image > Image Size and change the
width to 1200px, while making sure that the resolution is at 72
pixels/inch.
Bring the wood image into our original document. Save the file as
“wood_front.psdâ€, as a Photoshop document file somewhere where we
can get back to it later on.
Step 3: Adding in the text
Now we are going to add in our text. The font I am using is
Chunk Five, but any bold font will work.
We are going to use the wood as the face of our text, so select the
text layer and go to Select>Load Selection. A marquee outline of the
text should appear. Click on the wood layer and go to
Layer>New>Layer via copy to get the selection on a new layer. Now
you can just delete the original text layer and wood layer.
Step 4: Creating the text edges
Let’s duplicate the wooden text by going to Layer>Duplicate
Layer. Load the new layer by going to Select>Load Selection and fill
it with black (Alt+Delete). So you should now have one layer that has
the wood texture and one that is black.
Move the black text layer behind the wooden text layer. Using the
transform tool (Ctrl+T), hold down Shift and Alt, move the anchor points
inward. You should end up with something like what I have below.
Step 5: Making the text 3D
To create our 3D effect we are going zoom into our text and using the
Polygonal Lasso Tool (L) we are going to connect each corner of the
wooden text with the corresponding corner of the black text. We are
going to fill these shapes with black on the black text layer.
Step 6: Displacing the texture
Click on the wood text layer, then go into Filter > Distort >
Displace. Change the horizontal and vertical scales each to 1 and click
OK. This will open up a file browser, where we can open up the Photoshop
file we created in step 2. Repeat this for the black text layer also.
This should give the text a more natural edge that goes with the grooves of the wood.
Step 7: Color correcting the second wood texture
Open up the
Wooden Plank image in Photoshop. We are going to do some color correction to this image to make it darker for our text sides.
First let’s open up our Curves (Ctrl+M), change the Input to 187 and the Output to 77.
The color is really bright, but we are going to change that by going
into Hue/Saturation (Ctrl+U) and change the Hue to +15, Saturation to
-44 and Lightness to -24. This should give us a dark brown color.
Step 8: Adding the second wood texture
Go into Image > Image Size and change the width of the text side
texture to 1200px. This will make it easier to adjust the size, rather
than starting out with a huge image we have to shrink down.
Now we can bring the wood texture into our document.
This wood layer is going to go below the text face and in front of
the black text sides. To get rid of the excess wood texture we are going
to click on the black text, then go to Select>Load Selection. We are
going to get the inverse selection by going to Select>Inverse and
delete. This should leave us with just the texture where the black text
is.
Step 9: Color correcting the brick wall
Before we go any further with the text we are going to work on our
Red Brick Wall background. So open up the brick wall image and bring it into Photoshop.
Now this brick wall has kind of a faded look to it. We want to make
it more vibrant, at least for now to have consistent color intensity
throughout all of our images.
Open up your Image>Adjustments>Levels (Ctrl+L) and adjust the
arrows so they are at the start and the end of the graph like I have
done below.
Now bring the brick background into our document so that it is just
above the background layer. Now using the Transform tool Edit>Free
Transform (Ctrl+T) change the vertical and horizontal scale to 75%.
Step 10: Adding a bevel to the text
Let’s continue working with the text. Click on the text face layer and go to Layer>Layer Styles>Bevel and Emboss.
Change the depth to 1000% and the size to 2px. We also need to change
the angle to the top right because that is where our light source is
going to be coming from.
Finally, to get a little warmer edge to our bevel (rather than using
the black and white default colors), we are going to change the
highlight color to #FFCC33 and the shadow color to #663300.
Step 11: Adding an inner shadow to the text
Next we are going to go into Layer>Layer Styles again and this
time go into Inner Shadow. This will make the bevel stand out more and
make our text look less like a texture laid over text and more like each
letter is wooden.
Step 12: Adding a text shadow
Now we want to start working on the shadows. Click on the text face
layer and go to Select>Load Selection to get a marquee around the
text face. Next click on the shadow text layer and go to Select>Load
Selection and select Add to Selection.
Create a new layer by going to Layer>New>Layer (Ctrl+Shift+N)
and fill the selected area with black. Move this layer down so it is
just above the brick wall layer.
Go into Filter>Blur>Motion Blur and change the Angle to 20 degrees and the Distance to 200 pixels.
Step 13: Masking and blurring the shadow
We need to get rid of the shadow we just made on the top right area
of the text because the light will be casting a shadow toward the bottom
left. So go into Layer > Add Layer Mask > Reveal All, this will
add a layer mask to our layer. Click on the Brush tool (B) and using a
black brush at 100px wide with 0% hardness and 50% opacity, start
painting away the shadow areas on the top and right part of the
document.
The Motion Blur also gave us some harsh edges that we want to soften.
So go into Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and change the Radius to 8.5
pixels.
Step 14: Adding a shadow part 2
We are going to repeat steps 12 and 13, except this time the Motion
Blur is going to have an Angle of 15 degrees and Distance of 240 pixels.
Step 15: Adding a shadow to the text sides
To give the text sides some shadow, we first want to darken the
texture a little bit, so go into Curves (Ctrl+M) and adjust the Input
and Output to 147 and 117.
Now to get the shadow on the text, we are going to select the text
side wood texture layer and go to Select>Load Selection to get a
marquee around it. Create a new layer by going to Layer>New>Layer
(Ctrl+Shift+N), get the inverse selection by going to Select>Inverse
(Ctrl+Shift+I) and fill with black. This should fill the entire area
except where the text side wood texture is.
Make sure you deselect the marquee tool by going to
Select>Deselect (Ctrl+D) and go into Filter > Blur > Gaussian
Blur and change the Radius to 6 pixels.
Select the wood side texture layer and go to Select>Load Selection
then get the inverse selection by going to Select>Inverse
(Ctrl+Shift+I) and delete. This will get rid of all the black area
except where the blur went on the text, making our shadow. Now duplicate
the shadow layer with Ctrl+J to make it darker.
Step 15 Alternate: Refining the shadows
The previous step was just a quick way to make the shadow, but if you
want to go into more detail you can create a new layer by going to
Layer>New>Layer(Ctrl+Shift+N). Start lightly painting the areas
that would have a shadow (like the bottom and left sides of the
letters). Also use the Polygonal Lasso Tool (L) to get the straight
edges on the hard corners.
Step 16: Lighten the text face
Now we are going to lighten up the text face. Click on the text face
layer and go into Image>Adjustments>Curves (Ctrl+M). Change the
Input to 107 and the Output to 150.
Step 17: Adding a natural element
We are going to add some realism by adding a tree shadow on the left
side of the text. So we are first going open up our tree image in
Photoshop. Now, go to Select > Color Range. Click on the dark areas
and change the Fuzziness to 200.
The Color Range will create a marquee around the dark areas. Take the
dark area that we selected, create a new layer by going to
Layer>New>Layer (Ctrl+Shift+N), fill it with black and drag it
into our document.
Step 18: Tree shadow
To give our tree that shadow look we are going to go into Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Drop the opacity down to 50%.
Step 19: A little bit of lighting
To give a little bit of light inconsistency to make it more natural
looking, we are going to create a new layer and bring it just above the
brick wall layer. Now, using a white to 0% opacity gradient, click and
drag a circle from the middle left part of the document out.
Change the Blend Mode to Overlay.
Step 20: Color correction with a gradient map
Now we are going to do some quick color adjustments. First go to
Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Gradient Map and click on the yellow to
red gradient. Make sure the reverse box is checked. Drop the opacity
down to 10%.
Step 21: Color correction with a hue/saturation
Finally, go into Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Hue/Saturation. Drop the Saturation to -40.
Final
