Transparent Glass Lettering in Photoshop
Tutorial Details
- Completion Time: 1/2 hour
- Difficulty: Beginner
- Program: Photoshop
In this tutorial, we’re going to use some super layer effects and a bit of extra magic to make a lettering style that looks transparent and stunning. Because there is so much use of layer styles, you need to download the sample PSD from the link at the bottom of the tutorial in order to follow along.
Step 1:
BACKGROUND LAYER
To begin this tutorial, we’ll first give ourselves a nice background gradient. Now while most gradients are two-color, in Photoshop you can actually make much more complex gradients by clicking on the Gradient icon in the top left. You’ll get a panel showing the gradient and you can add more colors to it. In this case, I’ve used three colors to make a gradual change from green to a set of blues.
Multi-color gradients can make for a stunning background. I’ve used a Radial Gradient and centered it to the bottom right.
The colors I’ve used are:
Color 1 – #2e5b15
Color 2 – #103533
Color 3 – #090e13
Step 2:
Now we need a letter. I’ve used the letter Q because it’s my favorite, particularly in this serifed style. This is from the font Adobe Caslon Pro which I suspect came with my Photoshop install–although who knows, I have way to many fonts to remember! Give your letter a nice blue- green color. I’ve used #41a993.
Step 3:
Now after this, I basically went through all the different types of layer styles and just experimented with them all. You can produce some really wicked combinations with a bit of trying out. The main things I did here were:
- Decrease Fill Opacity to 20%. Fill Opacity makes the layer transparent WITHOUT making the styles transparent. Note that this is DIFFERENT to Opacity which just makes everything see-through.
- Another thing I did was to try changing angles around, using different blending modes, and building the layers up slowly.
In any case, you can see all the exact settings by downloading the sample PSD file from the link on the top right. You can then right click that layer and hit Copy Layer Styles if you just want to paste it into your own file.
Step 4:
So here is the result of my layer styles. It’s a pretty cool-looking style.
Note that I’ve made it look as if the light is coming from the bottom. This matches the direction of my gradient and gives a convincing look. I’ve then also used a fainter set of highlights coming from the other side. This vaguely matches how glass sometimes reflects light about.
Step 5:
Now hold down Ctrl and click on the Q layer to select the shape and add a white to transparent gradient coming from the bottom into a NEW layer.
You can do color to transparent gradients by clicking on the Gradient Tool in the top left and holding it down to see the whole set of gradients (as we did earlier in this tutorial). The second one along is color to transparency. It’s SUCH a useful gradient. Great for this sort of glass/plastic effects in particular.
Now fade this back by changing its blend mode to Overlay.
Step 6:
Now again hold Ctrl and select the Q layer. In a new layer, again add a radial white to transparent gradient, this time coming from the top down as shown.
Fade this one out by setting its opacity to 40%.
Step 7:
Now on the same layer as in the last step, draw an ellipse with the Selection Tool and hit Ctrl+Shift+I to select the inverse. Then hit delete to remove some of that gradient that we just drew.
Basically this makes the white suddenly stop and gives us a glassy feel. Try cutting in different ways to see the different sort of effects you can make.
Step 8:
Now glass shines, so lets add some highlights to make it look really shiny. You can do this by choosing the Custom Shape Tool (U) and then in the top left click on Polygon and then on the down arrow to get options as shown. Tick Star and make sure your indent is set to 99% to make some nice little 5 pointed stars.
Now in a new layer with white as your foreground color, just add some highlighted stars liberally about. It’s best to place them on the most highlighted parts of the Q to make it look like they are sparkles from those highlights.
Step 9:
And there you have the finished product: a glassy lettering style.
Sample PSD
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Very nice tutorial. I am currently gathering skills for my website tutorials. But don’t worry! I’ll give you credit
.
)
~Rainy May (Haha silly last name, huh? Yeah, i get that allot
REALLY IT IS UNBELIVEABLE AND FANTASTIC WEBSITE
hi, You have share with us really awesome tutorials but I always find that it never gives us perfect effect as you have given . but I am doing it again and again thank you so much!
Great tuts man, i think the right background color give something more to this effect
Very intresting
It’s not very useful without the link that was mentioned.
Awsome tut…once I opened up the sample PSD and looked at the settings of each style, I realized it depends on how big the original piece is..a little hiccup on the white to transparent gradient for the top and bottom of the letter, but once I read it through and understood exactly what you were doing, it flew!!….Nice effect…I love it and it is so customizable!!….THANKS!
This is the only site where i know the tutorials are top-notched and quite super efficient.thanks a lot this effect is nice been trying to create some glass glossy letters
I still dint get the Step 5
Something missing in the instructions. At least when I try it in Photoshop Elements. I open the sample file in there, and I manually copy all the effects and values from the layer effects menu. But it still doesn’t look the same, quite. So I copy and paste the layer style from the sample, and then it is closer – but what else has been changed, if it’s not available in that layer styles box?? Something else is added, but I can’t figure out what/where. (I have changed the fill opacity with a plug-in to elements).
Whatever else has been added that is not in the layer styles box, must have some colour added. If I change the background to yellow/orange, and then go to the layer styles box and change the colours of all the shadows, glows, strokes, etc to yellow or orange, I still end up with some blue/green effect in the outline.
What has been added and where, that adds this effect? I need to know so that I can replicate the original, but also so that the colours could be changed.
I want to create a logo for my website http://www.9shares.com
Please help me out.
Thanks in Advance,
Cheers,
Ameer
Hi There
File missing from link. Great tutorial, but difficult to follow without sample file
The PSD link appears to be broken. :S
please uploading the psd file or say how blending options i need
great tutoral, wasnt easy to make withut the file, but i got pretty close, thx!
I agree… great tecnhinque but without the psd it is rather difficult to follow…
Should have shown the layer styles in the tut. It shouldn’t be necessary to download the psd to follow along.
Otherwise it’s a very nice effect.
exellent
I got a really nice effect in the end but the instructions could be a little clearer.
Thanks for this great information! Now i will try to do my transparent glass letters!!!
awesome! want to try it
I found your explanations very vague and confusing, especially for newbies trying to learn new photoshop techniques.
Oh come one, what’s up with step 3?! “Yea, I kinda did something there and I did it slowly, but you have to figure out what I did by yourselves…” It’s supposed to be a TUTORIAL. If you decide to show this technique to everybody, then show the settings you used, at least as screenshots. If I could rate it, it would get 2/5. Sorry, pretty final effect on your screenshot doesn’t make it a good tutorial.
It is very nice. This is amazing because its something nice and it have a ‘clean’ looking….
super tutorial
I just wanna say thanks for taking the time to make this tut. I thought it was pretty cool and wanted to learn this
I’m very new to photoshop and having this type of material can be very rewarding.
Cheers,
chee
hi. help me to do step no 6. I cant proceed the step. tq
dont do them. cause they suck
I never got Caslon Pro with my Photoshop install! Is this a free font?
i have a very old version of photoshop and i am trying to follow along (bit of a newbie) but it doesnt look the same. Am i missing something obvious?
I need to upgrade to the latest version of Photoshop but just cant afford it at the moment. Does anyone know how i can get a discounted version as a student?
awesome, can’t wait to try this one/ thanks for sharing!
thanks m8… this is an awesome text tut… thanks again
Good tut – but for the result you could have at least posted the layer styles. If we have to figure out what you did then it isn’t much of a tutorial.
For us newbies, step by step is best – afterwards explain that if we play around with some of the settings we can get a different effect.
For a beginning tut it was a bit confusing. Either add more explanation or change the level.
Thanks
Well i wish i could do this tutorial.
However the PSD link is broken, Can you please re-upload.
hi there…
i’m following u from youtube.
just a nice lovable tuts man..
way of explaining is very good..thanks..ur voice also..
that psd link works for me.
once again thanks for this tut..
u think u did something? lol u say just crap man. only a few empty words explaining nothing correctly. sux
what is font name?
The final effect looks great, but if you’re really going to show someone how to do something, then complete the lesson. Things pretty much ended at Step 3. You can’t tell us to somehow kind of do what we see fit so that it ends up looking like yours but not give the actual specifics of what you did. 2 stars for me.
Well put. Yea I came up with an ‘ok’ replica, but I had to tinker around with the layer styles for far too long. Screenshots of the blend settings would’ve helped tremendously. I ended up just closing the document on Step 6. Sucks too, because the final result looks so good. 1 Star from me.
This is a quick, simple, cut-and-dry tutorial. All you have to do is download the FREE .psd under the huge black words “SMAPLE PSD” under the tutorial to see the layer styles. You’re already using photoshop to create the effect so I’m not sure what the problem everyone is having downloading the small file and opening it in the program. No steps are missing and all effects come through exactly as described.
Nice effect, thanks for sharing your glass letter technique.
I like the effects. It was simple and easy to copy and paste your layer styles into my own. Yet I missed going through each one to learn how to adjust the settings for each one! Next time, please describe each step in creating the layer styles, so we can learn more about how to configure each type of style (drop shadow, bevel, etc.). Thanks!
Till now i was searching for good text design form my web logo. I will try these psd for create new logo for my website. Thanks for post here. Please provide download links also so that we save lots of time
pretty complicated stuff. Took me about 4 attempts to make anything even resembling yours. I will need a bit more practice.
Thanks for the article, much appreciated.
The PSD file is at the BOTTOM of the tutorial.
I have learned a lot from experimenting on Photoshop. Now I can create logos similar to the one visible on my site with in few minutes. By applying filters and shadows you can create perfect logos with ease.
Thanks for this tutorial and I will definitely try this next time when I create a logo.