The popularity of text effects is not  going downhills and even if you may think that all the possible and impossible effects have already been tried out, sliced around and milled over — be surprised, every week I get to see new Text Effect Tutorials for Photoshop and they always look great and always impress me over and over, so in the mood of winter we decided to put together another text effect tutorial, this one is extremely easy but has a very nice outcome, which I hope will prove useful.

Step 1.

Open Photoshop and create a new canvas (Ctrl + N) of any size that will suit your needs. We are working with a relatively small canvas because we don’t need a huge one for our purpose. Fill your layer with #252d2c color.

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Step 2.

Go to Layer Styles options and add Gradient Overlay from white to black, with 15% opacity. Use the Reverse mode, so that the white spot will be in the middle and not the other way around.

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

This is what you got so far:

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

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Step 3.

Select the typing tool and write your word. We used “ChunkFive” font, Regular 127pt with Sharp edges.

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Step 4.

Go to layer styles while the typed word is selected and apply the following settling

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

So far, this is the result you should be seeing. Should you decide to work with any other font, please bear in mind that for our purpose we will need a very BOLD font, otherwise the frosty dots around letters and the image we will be applying afterward will hardly be seeing.

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

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Step 5.

Now we are going to take this beautiful image offered by flickr.com/photos/zitona

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

…and we are going lay this image over the text. Once you have pasted it onto your canvas, Set the Blending Mode to “Overlay”

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Step 6.

Duplicate the layer with the leaves and set the blending mode of the TOP image, to Normal. Select the Eraser Tool, and using a soft brush about 65 pixels size, remove the entire layer, except for the bit with the leaves. So for the demonstration we blacked out approximately the past that should stay.

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

And here is what you see, the rest of the later sits “behind” the text and nicely blurred in the background while the leaves are popping out on top of the text.

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

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Step 7.

Select the Marquee Tool and load a selection over the entire text. Go to Select >> Modify >> Expand, and set the expand mode to 5 pixels.

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Step 8.

Once the selection is loaded, create a new layer on top of all the other layers and using gradient tool from White to Transparent, pull a line over the selection, from top to bottom. Photoshop can be a bit tricky when it comes to working with gradients, so see what works best for you, maybe start about 20 pixels away from the selection and pull the line just half way through the text, not all the way down. Just play around with it!

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Step 9.

Set the Blending Mode of the gradient glow to “Overlay”, 47% or so, and send it behind the upper leaf, the one with “normal” blending mode.We are not hunting a dramatically visible effect, we just want to make a little outline.

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Step 10.

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Adding snow. Make a new layer on top of all the others.  Select the brush tool, and use a small brush with soft edge. Using white (#ffffff) as your foreground color, start adding snow on top of the letters. You may need to play around with the brushes a little bit, using bigger ones on top, and drawing icicles with smaller ones.

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

It should look like the snow actually FELL on the letters, so do not add chaotically.

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Step 11.

Apply the following Layer Styles to the snow layer…

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

For inner shadow, use the #989898 – darkish gray color. This is meant to give out show a nice glossy and beveled effect, allowing us to outline the iciness we want to present.

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Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

For contour, use the “Gaussian” contour, this is one of the default elements in Photoshop CS2+, maybe even in previous versions as well. If you don’t have this one, simply add a light curve to the default contour.

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

For color overlay we used #f7f7f7 light gray color. You may feel that you want to have the icicles more bluish, which will make them quite colder and much less realistic, but again — this is only a guidance, the more you add to the basic, the more creative your result will be.

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

When you are done, your ice-covered letters will look like this:

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

Step 12.

Last bit is to add snow. I’d suggesting to use the SAME layer you worked with for the show, as it will save you the time of apply the same layer styles once again to the snow. So simply take bigger and smaller brushes with round soft edge and place dots all over your canvas.

Done! Please feel free to download the PSD file of this tutorial and subscribe to our updates, to make sure you never miss a tut you might like even more.

Design a Wintry Text Effect with Icicles and Snow - PS Tutorials Lorelei Web Design

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