Quick Tip: Create an Extruded Glossy 3D Text Effect in Photoshop
Tutorial Details
- Program: Adobe Photoshop CS4+
- Difficulty: Beginner
- Estimated Completion Time: 5 Minutes
Download Source Files
Final Product What You'll Be Creating
People love 3D effects. They also love the look of shiny, glossy, graphics as well. Today, we will combine those two popular styles and create an extruded 3D glossy text effect in Photoshop. Let’s get started!
Step 1
Create a new document, make it 600px by 400px.

Step 2
Fill the background with #011923. Now, add some noise, go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise. 2% should be ok.

Step 3
Create a new layer and select the Elliptical Marquee Tool (M). Add a 150 px feather and drag out a shape as shown below.

Fill the selection with white and set the blending mode to Linear Dodge (Add) and bring the opacity down to 90%.

Step 4
Select a nice-looking bold font. I used Helvetica Neue LT Std 85 Heavy, but you can use anything you like. Set its size to about 160 px and fill it with white.

Duplicate the text, set the color to something darker. Send the darker text layer behind the original and adjust the width as shown below using the transform tool (T).

Step 5
Apply the following layer styles to the white text layer.




Step 6
Apply the following layer styles to the darker text layer.





Step 7
Grab the Brush Tool and select a big 200 px wide soft brush. This is what we will use to create some shiny reflections.

Paint the areas as shown and set the layer’s Blending Mode to Soft Light.

Step 8
Duplicate the text layer and rasterize it (Layer > Rasterize > Type). Select the Elliptical Marquee Tool (M) and create a wide shape as shown. Make sure to reset the feather value to 0px, we want this edge really sharp.

Now take the Eraser Tool (E) and start erasing the top part of it to get a nice and soft gradient.

Step 9
Use the Brush Tool again to create some soft spots and hit Cmd/Ctrl + T to bring up the Free Transform options. Scale down the width and rotate it 45 degrees by holding Shift while rotating. Duplicate it and rotate it again to get this x shaped sparkle.

Step 10
Create some copies of this sparkle and make them a little bit smaller, place them in the brighter areas. That’s it, you are done! Hope you enjoyed working on this tutorial!


Great Tip
Very good!!!
Good stuff, I like the sparkle you added for the final image.
uhm it takes a lot to load images :S even tho I have DSL
I love this effect. Great tutorial!
Beautiful & Simple
thanks
Very nicely done
Very nicely done thanks
This is a GREAT tutorial….
Nicely done!
Sweet quick tips, but really I wanted to say that I LOVE your little tooltip pointer (the blue thing) that points out where you’ve made changes. Very thoughtful :)
not very !!! not for psd-tuts
beautiful text effect in this short training.
nice and professional, maybe the 3D from the sides a little bit smaller.
It would be nice if you would be more detailed on how to make it look 3D. You just say adjust the width, and to a beginner like me, that means almost nothing.
Very nice mate
nice,thanx
Nice tutorial, easy to follow.
Thanks
Not look like 3D. I think it’s lixurious text
easy to follow
I liked the tutorial, but I think I messed it up a little bit. I couldn’t get my sparkles to not be as hard, what did you do there? Plus when I did the ellipical tool mine came out with hard lines as well. Not sure. But overall I learned some new things.
Thanks for the tutorial.
It’s good, but I think that the drop shadow on the surface layer of the text should only be displayed on the other glass ‘depth’ layer, and not the background, because it makes it look more flat.
Very cool
u are an artist
Lovely outcome.
Easy but really nice
superb job … a very simple and creative work .. thanks sir …
good job~~!!!
This is a very good one, thanks.
Very Good! easy and cool!
thanks!
Thanks, great tut!
I did it
but i don’t know why it shows like it’s in low quality ! =’ (
Nice Tut!
Though I was unable to get the exact result, overall I learnt some new things in following this tutorial. Specially the method you used to create that shiny sparkle is really awesome and easy.
Thanks!
Professional looks which i expected.
On step 8 I have no idea what you’ve done. Would anyone mind helping me please.
This is the best result I could get
– duplicate the front lighter text layer
– discard it’s text effects, then rasterised
– use eraser to show some blue through
Mine looks terrible though as the border shows in some places and not in others
Hi, I congratulate you for the tutorial, that it were looking for and where I can download the brush shine ….. thanks hope you can help
Simple and effective tecnique. Good tut.
doesn’t look like 3D, just 2 pieces of 2D texts standing side by side. no middle shades, where’s is the 3D?
Thanks for the tips…….
Learnt lots of new techniques, keep sharing the tips
WHERE DO I FIND THIS FONT???
HELP!
Its really cool!
NOT GOOD TUT DOESN’T EXPLAIN THOROUGHLY
This starts to fall apart and lack details at Step 7. Which layer do I apply the brush tool to? (It won’t allow it on the text layer selected in the previous step.) Erasing in Step 8 creates a very hard line.
This tutorial was very helpful. thanks for the tips. I had a bit of trouble with hard lines and such… but learned a lot!
The tutorial was really clear until I got lost in Step 8.
Overall good tutorial though.
This is a suck tutorial
Nice tut!
But I have got the same question like Nathan Cashion!
At Step 7 it somehow doesn’t work: When I add it to the layer I created before, the text gets no light. But when I add it to another layer, it somehow doesn’t look like you showed.
An answer is much appreciated. :)
This TUT is not a beginners level, there are far too many steps missing and assumptions made.
Very simple yet effective tutorial! Thanks.
Also, I recommend people try with more colors than just blue. I used red instead, with some specialized font, and I’m very pleased with the results. It doesn’t have the same glass look, but it still looks pretty cool.
really COOL…
thanks, great tutorial.