This tutorial will teach you how to make a text that looks as if it is located behind a broken glass, which gives a little bit 3D feel to the image.

It’s important to emphasize that this effect will only look good when we combine light text against dark background, otherwise, you will not be age to achieve a good result.

So.. make a new canvas of any size you want. We used the #181729 color for our background, but this is of course depends on your design. Arial narrow is our font here, however this is again up to your preference. Remember not to choose fonts with excessive curves because this may prevent us from achieving a nice result.

tut3-1.jpg

Select the typing tool and using the white color, type any word. Go to Layer >> Layer Styles >> Options and apply the following settings (by the way, the images are stored on my hosting, only different domain since I first thought pf publishing it on another blog. )

  1. Bevel and emboss
  2. Gradient #b2b3b7 … >> … #fcfafb
  3. Stroke Settings

tut3-5.jpg You got a nice and smooth gradient effect, and now duplicate the layer, make sure your duplicated text layer has the same Style settings, this will save you work now. Go to layer styles of your second text layer, and choose the Gradient tab. Change the gradient settings to black … white … black. I suggest to drag the white paint bucket a bit closer to the right side (so that the lightest spot won’t be in the middle, but somewhere at 3/4 towards the top. This is just my personal preference and of course you may choose to keep the white bucket right in the middle. I won’t object, really.

So far, you should achieve this result, and remember, underneath this you have a layer with lighest gradient settings.

tut3-6.jpg

tut3-7.jpg Now comes a more complicated part, if it won’t work right from the first try, don’t worry, just try a several times until you will be satisfied with the result. Rasterize the upper text layer Using the Lasso Tool, load a chaotic selection that will segment out the upper part of the text. Make sure you don’t cut out too much. Once you like the way your selection looks, press “Del” on your keyboard to delete everything inside the selection. Do the same with the lower part of the text, and be sure, when you press “delete” that the rasterized