How To Create a Gold Text Effect in Photoshop

How To Create a Gold Text Effect in Photoshop

Tutorial Details
  • Program: Adobe Photoshop
  • Difficulty: Beginner
  • Completion Time: 30 Minutes
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Final Product What You'll Be Creating

This entry is part 3 of 19 in the Text Effects Session
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Layer styles are one of Photoshop’s most powerful and fun features. You can create all sorts of plastic, glass, water, ice, or metal styles. In this tutorial we will show you how to create a nice gold text effect using this powerful tool. Once you are done, you’ll be able to save this style and apply it wherever you like. Let’s get started!

Editor’s note: This tutorial was originally published in January of 2008.


Step 1

Create a new document, apply a Layer Style on the background layer. Add a Gradient Overlay from black to a dark brown (#443501).


Step 2

Create a new Layer and apply Filter>Texture>Texturizer. Make sure that the foreground color is white and the background is black. After that, change the Blend Mode to Multiply.


Step 3

Add some text. I used Times New Roman, and for the “A” I used the “V” letter and flipped it vertically and horizontally.


Step 4

Now we start creating our gold layer style. We’ll set up the Gradient Overlay first, as shown below.


Step 5

Now we’ll add a Stroke. For the Fill Type use Gradient. The position of the gradient will vary for different typefaces, so experiment and see what looks good.


Step 6

Add Bevel and Emboss, as shown below.


Step 7

Finally, add some Shadow, again following the specs below.


Conclusion

This a very nice example of how powerful Layer Styles are in Photoshop. Sometimes just changing some values can create a totally different effect. For this tutorial I created gold, but if you change the gradient color to variations of grey you will have silver instead of gold.

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Discussion 305 Comments

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  1. Ben Linford says:

    Great work.
    This tutorial is a ‘cut-above’ a lot of similar ones on the web!
    Very good choice of typeface, leading to a great effect overall.
    The finish looks very rich (in every sense of the word).

  2. ilona says:

    Thank you so very much for this tutorial, Fabio! The result is amazing! :D

  3. ProjectDestiny says:

    How do you rotate the V in the second step without rotating the other letters?

  4. Awesome says:

    This tutorial is great.
    Unfortunately, the gradients were very hard to do without instructions. This tutorial was basically a collection of screenshots. There is room to improve. You could have told us how the gradients were created. Other than that, I created a nice gold effect. Thanks!

  5. piyush says:

    i like gold text-effect very much. Thanks.

  6. Theo says:

    Beautiful effect and excellent tutorial, thanks!

  7. Buzz says:

    I really like this effect, excellent tutorial, thanks for sharing!

  8. FOXC says:

    LIKE LIKE LIKE !
    THANK YOU :-)

  9. kyle says:

    agreed. at least tell us what you did (specs and all) and we can play around with them after we try your steps once or twice. I didn’t even come close so this was a waste of time.

  10. gitfo says:

    Exactly what i needed thanx. Saving this to my bookmarks. to browse your site again and revering peeps.

  11. Josh says:

    Im a noob to this and step 2 sais to “create a new layer and apply XYZ filter.. but when I do so i get an error that says “Could not complete the Texturizer command because the selected area is empty” Im guessing you’re missing a step or theres something because you never said to put anything in this new layer..

    lil help :-/

  12. Josh says:

    and how did you get that circular effect in the background??

    anywayz.. i guess I mad a nice looking gradient..

  13. akash says:

    thx brother super tuts

    i got many things about the layer and simple but the best text effects.

  14. John S says:

    What are the pantone references for the gold colours, you may as well just say:

    Step 1: Make a good gold color gradient
    Step 2: Use it

  15. Edwirdude says:

    Thank you for this totorial, it’s great, you helped me solve a Banner for a packing design in just 5 min.

  16. Edwirdude says:

    Thank you for this tutorial, it’s great, you helped me solve a Banner for a packing design in just 5 min.

  17. micah says:

    What fonts are you using?

  18. TheSkeletoN says:

    Times New Roman

  19. Armando says:

    I thought this would be an improved re-post of the tutorial, but just as the first time around it doesn’t have any color/gradients specs.

  20. maxtermedia says:

    Very nice done!

  21. Nneamaka anyiam says:

    Dis is nice!

  22. Tobi Laniyan says:

    This is awesome thanks for uploaded is always great to get started on text styles :)

  23. Awesome! Thank you for posting this tutorial! It opened up a new world for me. Keep up the great work:-)

  24. gig says:

    thanks, I learned a lot.
    I’m wondering whether satin can do the job.

  25. Mike K says:

    Great – but totally falls down because you don’t spec the gold gradient – which is central to the whole purpose of the tut!

  26. Karl says:

    Guys all you have to do is download the colorzilla addon for firefox. You can hover over the gradients and it tells you what the colors are. Anyways nice tutorial, very simple yet professional looking.

  27. Steve says:

    To everyone moaning about not having the colour codes, if you can’t use the colour palette in Photoshop to copy the colours from the images on this page then I think you have bigger problems than being able to do a gold effect. I really don’t see how you can find this difficult, I got the effect right near enough first time. The only thing that didn’t work was the Stroke and that was because I misread the guide.

    On another note, thanks for this. It works really well and the settings are pretty easy to play with to adjust it for the different fonts.

  28. Sofia says:

    Just tried this and had a fantastic result. Thank you so much, much appreciated.

  29. Danielle says:

    Awesome. I would never have thought to add more realism using a stroke w/a gradient.

  30. Sharon says:

    I like this. Very Elegant.

  31. si says:

    Very good but could you give us some colors from the gradients? almost impossible to replicate without them. Thanks!

  32. Phil D says:

    Just what Si said-

    Very good but could you give us some colors from the gradients? almost impossible to replicate without them. Thanks!

  33. Phil D says:

    Appears to be only 3 main colours.
    Here are the closest colours I could
    come up with from using a screen colour picker.

    ~~ Gradient Overlay from left to right:
    dark brown>lite yellow>lite yellow(again)>dark brown>dark yellow

    #44320e > #fbe6a7 > #fbe6a7(again) > #44320e > #a18c53

    ~~ Then for the Stroke from left to right:
    lite yellow>dark brown>dark yellow>dark brown>dark brown(again)>dark yellow>lite yellow

    #fbe6a7 > #44320e > #a18c53 > #44320e > #44320e(again) > #a18c53 > #fbe6a7

    ps: Kudo to Fabio big time.
    3+ year old article & this is the best looking gold text effect I seen
    so far out of about 7 different tutorials

    thanks (:

  34. Cero says:

    Just make a print screen of the gradient setup paste into phosotop, use the eyedropper over the gradient arrows and there you have your gradient colors ;).

  35. Kursat says:

    I have been trying to learn how to use my PSD for so long and your tutorial was my starting point.

    Thanks a lot.Everything worked out as I wanted.

  36. Destan says:

    Just wanted to show my appreciation.

    Thanks for this tutorial, I made some more progress on my learning of Photoshop.

  37. CiNiTriQs says:

    Nice and fast tutorial. Thanks alot!

    My approximate result to be found here: http://cinitriqs.deviantart.com/art/Gold-Text-Effect-255457563

    Thanks again!

  38. Jimmy says:

    Nice tutorial! only bit too bad u dint went into details :((( on some inportent parts

    http://wicketx.deviantart.com/#/d4b2mql

    Bedankt

  39. Ollie says:

    Nice, but it would be helpful if you could give us the color used for the gradient text overlays!

  40. Richard says:

    Great tutorial and one that I’ve used to good use for a makeup artisit website here http://johannapeirce.com/
    Many Thanks

  41. Rawaf says:

    Perfect tutorial, I was search about it .. thank you :)

  42. Saif Cr says:

    nice.. for the bigginers….

  43. Shajedul says:

    Nice tutorial! Thanx for post this tutorial.

  44. Very nice tutorial. Like it!

  45. SD says:

    Thanks a lot …I am planning to create a logo using this in between somehow…….nicely explained

  46. Christian says:

    Thanks for the tutorial!

  47. Jeonghoejin says:

    Awesome. thanks!!

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