In this tutorial we will be designing a cool retro text effect, which is growing more and more popular in today's design. Today you will learn how to use the Perspective tool to create depth and how designers can use default gradients in unusual ways!
Final Image Preview
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Video Tutorial
Our video editor Gavin Steele has created this video tutorial to compliment this text + image tutorial.
Step 1
Before getting started, you'll have to download the font Sega from dafont and install it. Installation is quite simple, in the configuration panel you can find a folder called Fonts, simply paste the file there and then fire up Photoshop.
The first step is quite simple. Fill your original layer with black and rename it to "background." Type out the text you want, preferably something more or less square, as shown below. Make sure that the text is adjusted towards the left. Right now you should have a layer with the background color and another layer with your text. In my example, I used 100pt text for the PSD part and 72pt text for the tuts part to make the width match.
Step 2
Now let's modify the text a bit. Open up the character palette for this (Window > Character). The field below the Text Size allows you to set the kerning between characters. Kerning determines the distance between two characters in relation to each other. So when you select your Type Tool and you put it between two characters, you can adjust the spacing between these two characters.
First, let's change the color of the text to #e59710. This is a good base color when you are aiming for gold, then we can stretch our text by either using Free Transform (Command + T), or by changing the character size. After blowing up the text, my top row of text has a size of 280pt and the bottom one has a size of 194,4pt.
Now we can do the actual kerning. After having selected the Type Tool, place the cursor between the P and the S, and I set the kerning to -55. This way we get a pretty nice connection between those two characters. Then place the cursor between the S and the D, set the kerning to -40.
Step 3
Now let's style the text. Think about this for a second; we want nice gold like text, with a bit of a distinguishable edge and a slight beveled 3D look. So, we'll need to use bevel to get depth on the outside, a little bit of inner shadow for depth on the inside and a gradient for the highlights.
Now to accentuate the bevel, we will use an inner glow. While below the screenshots are placed in descending order according to the Photoshop interface. I myself will generally start by adding the gradient first, then the bevel, and then the glows and shadows.
Step 4
Time to get our perspective going! First you will have to rasterize the layer. So duplicate the text layer (Always keep an editable duplicate of a text layer! ALWAYS!) and then add another layer on top of the duplicate. Now select your duplicated text and your now empty layer, then merge them using Command + E. Unlike rasterizing a layer through the Layer tab at the top of the screen, this method will also rasterize the layer style.
In this case, it's a good thing because we want the style to move along with the distortion. If you were to do it via the Layer tab, the layer style would adjust back to a planar distortion. In short: This way is better because it gets rid of the fx sign.
Now with your rasterized type layer you should go to Edit > Transform > Perspective. Grab the top right anchor point, and while holding shift, drag it up. Additionally, you can grab the left anchor point, and holding shift, drag it down a bit to create more of a depth effect. Then scale the text down a little to get rid of the blur.
Step 5
Duplicate the distorted text two times, now drop these three layers in a layer set called "text." Change the name of the top layer (of the three) to "front," middle layer to "mid," and the bottom layer to "back."
Using the arrow keys nudge the bottom and middle layer to the right until you get something like in the image below. As you can see the "back" layer needs to be a fair bit away from the "front" layer, while the "mid" layer should be a bit closer.
Step 6
Select the "mid" layer and set the fill to 0% (the fill is located underneath Opacity in the layer palette). Now using layer styles, apply a Gradient Overlay. A quick way to do this is by selecting the Foreground to Transparent Gradient. That is the second gradient on the top row from the left, simply click on the triangle next to the gradient field to drop down the different gradients. Then change the foreground color to #008aff.
Step 7
Create a new layer above the "front" layer and call it "chrome grad." Now, Command-click on the "front" layer to get a selection area. Select the Gradient Tool (press on the paintbucket and hold, then select the gradient tool) and choose the chrome gradient. Now run this from from the top left corner to the bottom right of your selection area. Then change the Blending Mode of the layer to Soft Light.
Step 8
Create a whole new Layer Set and call it "soft flares." Now if this layer set ends up in the "text" layer set, you can simply drag it out of there and position it above the "text" layerset. Now, inside the "soft flares" layerset create a new layer and call it "highlight flare." Fill this layer with black and then go to Filter > Render > Lens Flare, and choose the 100mm Prime Lens with a default brightness of 100%.
Position the highlight where you want, I put it on the top part of the letter S in TUTS. Change this layer's Blending Mode to Soft Light and duplicate it. Now position it somewhere else, I put it between the P and the S.
Using a mask brush away a part of the duplicate because when you have two layers of black that are overlapping, it will be noticeable in the brightness of the text. Next, use a black brush to fill up all of the transparent areas on both layers, which emerged while we were rotating and resizing the flares.
This is important because again, it will be noticeable on background elements, which will be added at a later stage. It's best to fix it now, then to go back to it later on and find out which layer is causing the issue, especially in projects where layers reach beyond the 100 mark this can be a very annoying problem.
Step 9
Now as you can see on the last screenshot, both the "text" and "soft flares" sets have been dropped into the "psdtuts" set. Let's add a reflection. Duplicate this set and rasterize it as we did before. Create a new layer, select both of them, and hit Command + E.
Go to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical and position the reflection under the original text. Go to Edit > Transform > Skew to fix the reflection (because we need the T of TUTS to line up). Grab the left middle anchor point and drag it up. Add a mask to the new layer called "reflection," then using a black to white gradient (you can just select the default gradient by hitting D on your keyboard to set the colors back to default), create a nice fade.
Step 10
Between the "reflection" layer and the "psdtuts" set create a new layer and name it "flare front." Fill it with black and go to Filter > Render > Lens Flare, and pick the 50-300mm Zoom at 100% brightness. Position this layer on a nice spot and set its Blending Mode to Linear Dodge (add).
Step 11
Duplicate the "flare front" layer, set the Blending Mode to Screen instead of Linear Dodge (add). Next, move it below the "psdtuts" set to position it behind the text. Let's name this layer "flare back."
Step 12
Open up a new document (Command + N) with a size of 40px by 2px. Select half of this document with the Rectangular Selection Tool and fill it with black. In order to be more accurate with the selection you can turn on the rulers by hitting Command + R. Next go to Edit > Define Pattern, and give this pattern a name.
Step 13
Close that file and go back to our original file. Just above the "background" layer, which we made at the beginning of this tutorial, create a new layer. Go to Edit > Fill, and choose the pattern we just created. This should fill the screen with the pattern. Set the fill to 0%, then through Layer Styles, add a Color Overlay with the color #dd04ad. Lower the Opacity of this Overlay to 64%.
Conclusion
Hit Command + T and resize and rotate the stripes 90 degrees. Hit enter and go to Edit > Transform > Perspective. And just like we did before, except this time on the right side you need to grab the upper corner anchor point, then while holding Shift, drag it down. This will narrow that side, in effect making it look as if it's going away from you.
On the left side, you grab the top corner and drag it up, while holding Shift, making it look as if it's coming towards you. Notice the funny effect you get with the text standing on a part of the lines, it looks as if the lines are actually bending, but they're not! And that's it! Have fun experimenting with this text effect!
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User Comments
( ADD YOURS )GREAT!!! November 15th
Nice tut!
( )chico November 15th
Nice tutorial. Thanks.
( )Takumi86 November 15th
OMG the lightning!! so cool!
( )blackmekemeke November 15th
thank you for this amazing tutorial!
( )Josh November 15th
3rd, yay! looks pretty cool, and a nice tut, thanks =]
~Josh
( )Ben Reid November 15th
Nice!
Will be giving this a go later!
( )Germansn November 15th
muy buen tutorial
( )Elliot November 15th
It looks very cool but the perspective on the pink stripes creates a confusing effect like and Escher painting.
At the top of the image the stripes appear to be running horizontally across the ‘back wall’ but if you follow them down the wall, suddenly they are running across the ‘floor’ under the ‘T’ of TUTS. However, if you look to the right of the text, they all appear to be running horizontally across the wall again.
Unless that was what you were going for of course!
( )VertigoSFX November 15th
Gorgeous effect…I like
( )afrix November 15th
Easy n nice tut well done!
http://afrix99.deviantart.com/
( )loswl November 15th
Nice work on the lighting!! ;o)
( )Emmett November 15th
Looks like one of those “Now thats what I call music” CD’s from the 90’s lol
Emmett
( )http://www.filmandgamecomposers.com
Greg Althoff November 15th
Great job on posting a tutorial.
( )insic November 15th
really nice indeed. good work
( )nass May 2nd
wow very pretty!!
( )Shaan June 15th
hi dear u r so pretty !
( )Mr Kuzio November 15th
Good job.
( )The lights are great!
Mikkel November 15th
The reflection really sucks…
( )Tanaka13 - Créations du Net November 15th
very nice style! and cool lightning!
( )Rommel November 15th
great tuts, i like
( )kamel November 15th
why collis icon is there?!
( )sc November 15th
i like it. thank you.
( )Shane November 15th
Nice style – I like it. Thanks for posting.
( )Brian November 15th
Very rad writeup. Thanks!
( )aMs November 15th
Nice idea, but reflection totaly sucks indeed.
( )Anthug November 15th
Ridiculous, you make it look easier and easier. Thank you for existing.
( )Sandeep November 15th
really nice… tutorial…. Thank You
( )paskal November 15th
nice tuts. but on my firefox 3.0.4, step 6’s pic wont show up no matter how many time i refresh this page.
retro rocks
( )i’m a diehard fans of PSDTuts
Mabuc November 15th
Very nice and awesome I really like here.
( )digitalpharaoh November 15th
I have to agree…the reflection as it is leaves a little to be desired…for ME, anyway…but that’s beside the point…sweet text effect.
http://digitalpharaoh.wordpress.com/
( )Rijalul Fikri November 15th
will try this later. Looks nice
( )Ruben November 16th
Love it! I needed a font like this too, haha. Thanks!
( )aMs November 16th
This kinda reminds me of Starwars font
( )Tom Ross November 16th
Simple but useful, thanks for sharing.
( )Nikola November 16th
nice text effect! thanx
( )gNcWebmaster November 16th
Nice Tutorial . Thanks
( )Josh Drake November 16th
Nice, simple effect!
( )Moksha November 16th
nice tutorial, not many steps but look really good, thanks
( )Vedat.0k November 16th
thanks
( )Ariful Alam Khan November 16th
Good work. Thanks
( )Teo Atienza November 17th
Awesome! Thank you PSDTuts for this tutorials
( )das_1980 November 17th
Hey, great tutorial and awesome effect. Just wanted to point out that I think the lens flare used in step 10 is movie prime and not 50-300mm Zoom, just in case anyone gets confused by that.
Keep up the good work, i enjoyed going through this one!
( )Pirrus May 11th
i dont get the option to select lens flare… its greyd out…. any ideas???
( )Mike November 17th
Why does the reflection suck? I think it looks good…
( )AKA November 17th
Hey, I believe the lens flare effect for step 10&11, is supposed to be “Movie Prime” and not 50-300 mm Zoom.
( )Makmal Cyber November 17th
Nice Tutorial.. Wanna try this out.. Thanks..
( )paKiviritz November 17th
Nice tut, too bad sega typhography doesn’t have numbers….any idea??
( )Love November 18th
Nice tut
( )john November 20th
sweet write up
( )Thatayaone Dibe November 20th
That is so like Wow!!……………
( )Debra November 20th
Effects like this are really useful. The web design studio I work for has used similar styles recently.
( )Brian Michael November 21st
Awesome! These are the tuts we like
( )Jesse November 21st
I just learned something over at planetphotoshop.com that will really help out with this effect:
Instead of rasterizing your text layer in Step 4, right click on the type layer in the layers palette, and choose the ‘Convert to Shape’ option. Your text has now become a vector-masked shape layer, which, as you all know, will not distort or pixellate no matter WHAT you do to it!
Just thought it might help get a cleaner result. Hope it helps!
( )psaddict November 23rd
Added to http://www.psaddict.com
( )Thom November 23rd
Awesome techniques, very good use of effects and styles. I also appreciate your writing approach, it’s very conversational without being too vague. Looking forward to more!
( )Stefan November 24th
frikkin’ awesome
( )Pravin Potdar November 25th
nice tuts!!!
( )Quickly November 25th
http://www.clavis.ne.jp/~sonic/segasonic/act5/11.htm
There is the Sega font, but from a japanese sonic site (haha)
The good thing about it, is that it has almost everything. Numbers included
( )Ashley November 27th
I think it’s safe to say that I’ve learnt something new from doing each of your tutorials. Thank you.
Thank you <3
( )Lizz November 29th
I still don’t understand what I’m doing wrong, but when making the reflection at step 9 by hitting command + e , instead of getting a nice effect, flares appear all over the image just like if the flares layers were in a normal blending mode.
Hope anyone could help me to fix this.
By the way, GREAT TUTORIAL!
P.S. Please forgive my lousy English.
( )Mohammad November 30th
Nice tutorial. Thanks.
( )L'K December 2nd
Perspective on your background is wrong, but maybe that was the effect? Love the text, simple but really effective.
( )Jonathan December 4th
Lizz – Command (Ctrl) + Click on one of the text layers so that the lens flares are applied within the boundries of the text area. (Apply the lens flare to a new layer (not the text ones)).
( )raz0r December 6th
Where is a lesson?
( )Tod December 9th
Thanks for a great tutorial.
( )nadi December 10th
very nice tutorial with a good idea
( )http://www.gana50.deviantart.com
Chris December 16th
Awesome tutorial love the finished look
( )Chris December 16th
Awesome tutorial love the finished look, Cheers
( )jimmer December 22nd
really hard to follow.
especially, about the purple strips.
and im no noob at phtoshop either.
but it looks sooo cool
( )RoBIN December 24th
the reflection is really stuff..
( )Dave December 25th
I liked it, however I had problems and step 8. I really couldn’t follow –
“Using a mask brush away a part of the duplicate because when you have two layers of black that are overlapping, it will be noticeable in the brightness of the text. Next, use a black brush to fill up all of the transparent areas on both layers, which emerged while we were rotating and resizing the flares.”
I kept going and right up until I do the reflection, my picture was almost identical to yours. However, once I did the reflection, I had artifacts all over the place. I’m not used to working with masks…
Thanks though, I had fun.
( )Dave August 22nd
In step 8 I filled the highlight flare layer with 50% grey instead of black. Then I didn’t need to add a layer mask.
( )Miss Neal December 27th
I’m having issues with step 7.
I’m not great at photoshop, but is everything suppose to be covered in this step when I apply the chrome?
( )Daz December 28th
I had a nightmare with this tut, not straight forward to follow. But I kinda got there in the end, well almost. Thanks for the tut!
http://img37.picoodle.com/img/img37/3/12/27/f_sternstutm_d55cd95.jpg
( )LukeSB January 3rd
Hey, When I try go Filter>Render>Lens Flare, Lens Flare is grayed out..? Any ideas anyone..?
Cheers
( )Ali July 9th
Go to Image – Mode – and select RGB Colour.
( )slevi January 4th
by far, the most fun tutorial with the most imressive results!
( )thanks for sharing
artzam January 4th
Nice effect..great toturial..
( )Dreamkingdom January 5th
The picture at step 6 is missing, so i don’t know how to do that step
( )dinesh January 7th
nice
( )nasha January 8th
the pic on step six is missing. what does the picture show exactly?
( )ilias January 10th
Great tutorial but too bad the screencast is of bad quality even though it’s HD..? I think something went wrong there..
http://img.skitch.com/20090109-kxr9y7ms8s54m7rce4cxcmcryi.jpg
( )cardsimjin January 10th
Nice effect…. Thanks..
( )cardsimjin January 10th
http://croquis.net/blog/attach/1/4294172247.jpg
( )Skech January 12th
Cool! That is what i have done:
http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/3305/billblake.13/0_2010f_97f40a08_L.jpg
( )Lukaz January 14th
really cool and usefull!
)
the only thing i would have done otherwise is the mirror effect, do the mirror effect first and do the perspective later, it is more easy to do than the skew transformation. (don’t take my english to serieus
but still, really nice though!
( )jeedoo January 15th
不错~~ 学过了~~
( )wabba January 28th
nicely done i’ll be using that last effect in my finals ^_^
( )ingulous February 2nd
THIS was suuuch a great help many hanks truly. great job too absolutely amazing
( )Widodo February 3rd
Great job, i will try do it.
( )Brian February 14th
I designed a website for a production company a couple of years ago. This tut fits their logo to a T! Just thought it was interesting…
http://www.pdcproductions.com
( )ishaq February 16th
its cool but when i fill pattern just above the bg strangely its not showing,i can see it in the layers icon but somethin is blocking it
( )kalpesh February 20th
this tutorial is very easy and effective.
( )April February 20th
I’m so loving this to its highest level!
( )panda bear February 27th
i cant install the lethers
( )Allahverdi Sefihanov March 5th
really great…
( )brad March 5th
wow…so im a beginner at this and this tutorial is awesome! thanks…im hooked
( )diondwi March 6th
Best……!!!!
( )Mira March 7th
The tutorial certainly inspired me to create a nice looking wallpaper. Thanks!
( )Christian March 9th
Really nice!
( )Will try this tonight!
agomez March 10th
Real nice thank u…
( )Mahendra B. Twanju (Aryan) March 20th
Its quite amazing work. I liked it.
( )shashikant Lokare March 24th
superb…………… very nice
( )ocePUNKgalak March 31st
cool………………………………………………………!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11
( )alex villa Colombia March 31st
superman, thanks (gracias amigo muy bacano)
( )DM April 3rd
This is awesome!!! just one thing, how did you get those little blue lines that seem to come out of the flare?? I followed your tut step by step and i didnt get em…
Thanks a lot!!
( )Wendy April 4th
I dont get the last part..
( )I made the pattern right, then I saved it and closed it.
Then when I was trying to fill that on my image, it doesnt appear my pattern on content?
OMG Im so LOST
Aislinn April 5th
Im going to try this even though I don’t have anything except the substandard Elements. It requires a lot more patience to use it with real PS tutorials, but hopefully I can get sort of this kind of image. Maybe. I can only hope.
Not having rasterize really makes it harder.
( )Aislinn April 5th
Hours later…mine doesnt look much like the tutorial, for the most part the close part of the text is all fuzzy its not crisp at all. I cant get the lens flare to work nor the gradients either, but its passable although I wont consider it anything more then a learning session. I learned that “simplify layer” is the same as rasterize to an extent.
( )Serge April 6th
Fresh Tutorial Man!!
( )Nicole April 16th
Awesome!!!!!
( )thanks!!!
RiPPLE May 4th
Amazing Tutorial This Is Mine
http://i41.tinypic.com/2lm3thh.jpg
( )Pat May 10th
great tutorial !!!
although i did have a few hiccups which i manged to fix with a bit of manipulation
( )Jyot May 11th
Hi,
( )I liked the effect! Thanks for it…
Just an innovation..for the perspective angles, try on ‘Vanishong Point’ in filters… its nice!
somepoints May 30th
This is really nice
( )Tim June 3rd
Thanks for sharing, it looks good
( )kwame June 19th
a good one.thankx
( )Iklan Baris June 28th
You ‘re the best… thanks for your tutorials.
( )Ruden June 30th
Very nice tutorial. Its very effective and meticulously explained. I got very nice results except that the text did not look crisp and looked a little blurred. Dont know why. Anyway thanks a lot for your time.
( )stop dreaming start action June 30th
It looks very cool but the perspective on the pink stripes creates a confusing effect like and Escher painting.
( )Joe July 2nd
Very Retro, i like it!
( )Vedat August 21st
thanks good tutorial
( )Taylan August 29th
Very Nice
( )ratmith September 2nd
Awesome Tutorial. Thanks!!
( )Johnny September 6th
Great tutorial, thanks!
( )mirul September 26th
lovely!!
( )nath seiha September 27th
thank i like the effect! it very nice.
( )mandy hagen October 3rd
WONDERFUL. I followd the video!, Very satisfied. check it out!
( )Hubert October 11th
A decent tutorial… no doubt about that. Althrouht you need to follow video tutorial as well as text + image one (not every single detail is precisely described on a text one). I’m almost a complete noob, but manage to done this one in something like 90 min. (first geniue photoshop experience for me)
( )Zerodivide October 12th
Thx!
( )Vince October 13th
I didn’t really get it
( )vally October 15th
http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/7321/designsmoreglow.jpg
my outcome
( )shorya November 18th
thank u so much..
( )