So, let’s get started. Create a new canvas, we are using 600 x 370 pixels here.

Fill it with any background color and for best effect, fill it with background texture. Simply double click the background in Layers Panel, and Layer Style’s menu will pop up. Go to Pattern Overlay mode and fill with, preferably floral, pattern. Here we used Damask pattern which unfortunately isn’t available for a download by the author anymore, but you can get more free textures here.

When you are done, select the typing tool and type your word in the middle, with very big and gold letters. Should you decide to use a narrow or small font, the effect simple won’t be visible. We used the GEronto Bis font, 236 pt size, exactly as you see on the canvas below:

Now the magic will begin. Double click the layer with the letters, and start applying the layer styles as you see below. First, make a small shadow with Gaussian Contour.

Add inner shadow with dark gray hue (we used #4f4f4f) and for contour we available of another pre-installed curve called “Half Rounded”. If you are using Photoshop CS2 + version, you should find it among your default curves.

Add outer glow with a color that will complement your background, in our case we had blue damask texture as our background and chose the #3c447a blue hue as Outer Color.

For the Contour here, we used Ring – Double. This will also come pre-installed to your Photoshop. Please note that every setting in this tutorial makes use of different Contour curve, which makes our effect particular interesting and the effect stands out. This Double Ring is exactly what gives the nice radiation / explosion glowing rounds wrapping the text.

Inner glow with #ffffff white color, and once again Gaussian Contour.

Bevel and Emboss will give our text the depth it needs. Use the default Ring contour to get the best metallic / plastic look effect.

For contour, use the “Wow-sharp highlight” Contour element.

We also want to give more deep and extreme Satin effect but this time, since we found no contour that suited our needs, we created our own curve…

To get exactly the same results as we have here, please copy our mapping to your Contour Editor.

Finally add stroke to your text, with a lighter hue of blue that will complement your background. Please do not use white or black as these colors will look too contrasted with background.

This is what you have got so far:

white to transperant gradient

Finally, load a selection of for the upper part of the text . If you do not know how to do it, read on:

• Create a new layer on top of the text, and then hold down Ctrl and click on the layer in the layer’s panel, in order  to select it.
• Using the Gradient Tool Now that goes from #ffffff to transparency.
• draw a gradient from the beginning of the selection on top, down to it’s bottom.
• Using the Elliptical Tool, draw a selection from the middle of the text to the bottom, and press Delete, to leave just the little gradient on top of the letters.
• This will do the gradually-glossy topping effect.

Done! Hope you enjoyed the tutorial and please feel free to download the PSD file of this effect, the file is of 600*370 size, same as you see here.

Second thing to bear in mind is the depth of field. When you concentrate your look on a certain point, the rest becomes a little blurred in your vision, especially if the rest of the objects lay far behind. This is what we call — depth of field. In other words, human face cannot be just as sharp on the picture, as the background house that appears to be a few miles behind the figure. Although this isn’t always true and we have different variations of art (and sometimes the unusual is the best looking surreal concept!) but I am giving this little info so you will understand WHY we blur certain points and why we play with light the way we do, in this Photoshop Tutorial.

Ingredients:

http://dracoart-stock.deviantart.com/art/Asbury-Park-NJ-5-118481560

http://liam-stock.deviantart.com/art/Faballa-4-111550452

http://flordelys-stock.deviantart.com/art/sky-017-62717553

http://dracoart-stock.deviantart.com/art/Balloon-Festival-30-102183167

Get started.

We were working on a rather big canvas, we started with 1024px × 764px new layer as these were the dimensions of our base image. However you may feel more comfortable working with smaller or bigger images.

Take the image with fence and sand and paste it unto your Canvas:

Using the Rectangular Marquee Tool, crop out and delete the sky and water upper half of the layer:

Don’t worry about the rough unnatural layer, we will work this out a bit later.

The next step is take the image with sky (from our ingredients list), and paste it on top of the  previous layer with sand. Using Eraser Tool with a small soft brush, remove the lower part so that you will have an image consisting from sky and sand, just as you see below:

The way our image looks now, it’s very far yet from been an organically blended scene, so let’s start blending the layers into one another.

To make the sand less cheery, the easiest way is to simply match colors with the clouds, so this is exactly what we are going to do. While the sand layer is selected, go to Image >> Adjustments >> Match Color and apply the following settings:

if you have already unselected, select the layer with sand again, and go to Curves. Using the RGB channel, darken the image by dragging the curve down somewhere in the middle. We used Output: 113 and Input:143.

So, begin with making  a new canvas of any desired size, and for now please use plain white (#ffffff) background. Later on we will add a custom texture or picture to the background, but for now, it will be much easier for your to work and see all the effects against the white canvas.

Select the typing tool and using Arial Rounded MT Bold font, set to “sharp”, use very big letters, say over 100. For the purpose of the tutorial we used 115, however if you choose to download out PSD, you will see that our original canvas consists from letters with font size 195.

Type your word.

The main part of this Photoshop tutorial consists from precise application of the layer styles as we are going to work with custom designed curved, textures (default) and a lot of other features. Let’s begin and please try to follow us throughout the tutorial if you wish to achieve the same result.

Go to Layer >> Layer Styles, and start off with “Drop Shadow” options. Apply the settings as you see below. For the shadow here we used a very dark blue, almost black color: #003059. However, feel free to chose a different hue if you are going to work with a light background canvas afterward.

Switch the tab to Inner Shadow. For Inner shadow we used a gray-blue color #0a7eaf, which will nicely complement the overall wintry feel of this text. Please pay attention to the fact that we are using “Noise” here at 3%, to add to the grainy / snowy effect.

Switch to Outer Glow and apply a very dark outer glow effect, we used #0a1732 with 35% which gave us light yet dark outlined shade.

Working our way down (in Photoshop..), to Inner Glow settings. This one gives our text effect the feeling of light and reflection, yet this is not going to be a direct spotlight, rather a cold reflection as you are used to seeing when looking on ice. Also here please note that we have applied a 17%, very visible noise.

Add Bevel and Emboss settings for extremely curved effect.

INCLUDES :

.asl file with 8 transparent styles.
.psd (800px * 150px) file with the 8 transparent styles for easy copy and paste.
.psd file with editable text (800px * 1400px) with the 8 transparent styles layered to create the glassy text effects depicted.

FONTS USED :

Georgia, Tahoma, Snell Roundhand But these styles look great on a wide variety of fonts. Down;load these styles for only $2, sold exclusively through graphics river.

German: 8 Transparente Layer Styles & 3 Elegant Glas Text Effekte mit ihnen in Verbindung. Werke für große Icons und Buttons zu!

UMFASST:
. ASL-Datei mit 8 transparent Stile.
. PSD (800px * 150px)-Datei mit der 8 transparent Stile für einfache Kopieren und Einfügen.
. PSD-Datei mit editierbaren Text (800px * 1400px) mit der 8 transparenten Schichten Stile, um die Auswirkungen Glaskohlenstoff Text dargestellt.
Verwendete Schriften:
Georgia, Tahoma, Snell Roundhand Aber diese Stile sehen auf einer Vielzahl von Schriften.

Spanish:  8 Estilos de capa transparente de vidrio y 3 elegantes efectos de texto creado por su uso en combinación. Obras de grandes iconos y botones también!

INCLUYE:
. snm archivo transparente con 8 estilos.
. psd (800px * 150px) archivo con los 8 estilos transparente para fácil copiar y pegar.
. psd archivo de texto editable (1400px * 800px) con las 8 capas transparentes estilos para crear el vidrioso efectos de texto representado.
Fuentes utilizadas:

Georgia, Tahoma, Snell Roundhand Sin embargo, estos estilos ves muy bien en una amplia variedad de fuentes.

French: 8 Transparent Layer Styles & 3 Elegant Glass effets de texte créé à l’aide de leur combinaison. Travaux grand pour les icônes et les boutons aussi!

COMPREND:
. asl fichier transparent avec 8 styles.
. psd (800px * 150px) fichier transparent avec les 8 styles de simple copier-coller.
. psd fichier texte éditable (800px * 1400px), avec les 8 niveaux de transparence styles pour créer le miroir des effets de texte illustré.
Les polices utilisées:
Georgia, Tahoma, Snell Roundhand Mais ces styles fière allure sur une grande variété de polices.

Inspiration: Although today’s horror movies are all quite cheesy, very predictable and always disappointing,  I drew my inspiration from one of the infamous and unpopular movies – “Long Distance“, starring the beautiful Monica Keena. Don’t be surprised if it does not ring a bell, I’d be surprised if it did. I myself however love the cover / poster of this movie, the original plot and I decided to make my own little scenery with my own little plot, which is more or less reflected in the film’s poster.

So, let’s get started. The canvas size is really your choice, you may want to make it slightly longer or even bigger, because we initially work wit ha small image here.

Paint your canvas in dark color, we used #211f1f.

Take one of the grungy backgrounds you like to use, make sure it’s pale enough and not too dark. We used a great image from here.

You don’t need to use a stained old paper, like I used here. You can also use bricks surface, old wood or any other old-looking texture because this is not going to be your leitmotif, we just need something to be on the background.

Now, once you have downloaded the texture you want to use, let’s move to the next step.

Paste the background you downloaded unto the dark canvas you are working with. You will need to either resize or de-size it. I didn’t bother downloading the full version of this background, so I just took the small image and stretched it across the canvas, because in this case, we don’t mind to lose a bit of quality.

Once pasted and resized, set the lending options of the background to “Overlay“. You should have it looking like this..

Once this background has been blended, let’s add some more horror – grunge effects. If the hue of your canvas turns to be different — don’t worry, eventually we will overwrite it all with black and white so the colors are irrelevant at the moment.

Next, we took this nice finger prints image, called “Tint black 2″. Again, paste it onto your canvas, resize, position slightly above the middle…

Set the blending options to “Darker Color” and Opacity to 80%.

This is more or less how it should look.

Next thing we need is a model for our main character in the movie. Here I really can’t advice you, feel free to use any photo you really like, if you want — use your own and then print it up as a poster, this could be a great idea for your bedroom! So… Choose a picture of a girl. We wanted to go with a dramatic look so we chose a fantastic photo taken by Zsolt Dreher of a woman under the rain. You can download it here.

type the word u like… we used customized GauFont PopMagic.

go to layer >> layer styles >> blending options, and set the following settings:

Inner Shadow

Inner Glow

and also…

Bevel and Emboss

Contour Line Inside

Contour

Satin

Colour Overlay

After all these settings, u will have this:

Now, duplicate your layer.

Select the upper (copied) layer and go to Filter Blur Gaussian Blur, and apply THIS BLUR

Reduce the opacity of the blurred layer to about 70%.

That’s it, hope u like the result, please post any questions u have!

However, if can’t really find anything particularly original to symbolize your design, it’s “safer” to go with the current trends of web design. So here is a very small fragment of web design layout, and how to turn a regular layout into a web 2.0 layout.

This is what we had…

And this is what we are going to do…

We are going to work in Photoshop, using nothing but layer styles; focusing on mild gradients and shadows.

Start off by using the Rectangular shape with rounded corners, and drawing a… rectangle.

What we need to do first is give our rectangle some depth and life. Following the principles of web 2.0 design, only shadows, outlining and light gradients will give us this effect. So go to layer styles, and drop a little mild shadow. We used #96aed6 for this purpose.

To give the shape a little depth (so it won’t look like a flat object), add mild inner shadow, with darker tone (we used #304f82 )

Lastly, its important to add a little outlining. We will use the #FFFFFF white color, since our shadows from both sides are darker, we want to have a light and semi visible line that will contour the shape.

I decided to make a sister icon with a clover leaf. When I was in Prague last time I saw such an impressive variety of Swarovsky glass and it inspired me to make a graphic with similar structure, deep and subtly sparkling. Anyway, the download is free and you can use it any way you like The preview image is desized, otherwise blog template gets reformatted, you can previous the full version here.

Download FREE

(100 kb, zip folder with the 3 icons in PSD format)