Plastic border text in Photoshop

Note: This tutorial is written for Photoshop CS on a Windows XP platform and assumes you have a basic knowledge of Photoshop. However, this technique will work on most versions of Photoshop or similar graphics package.

You are going to make some text like this:

1. Create a new canvas 140px wide and 65px high with a background colour #333333.

2. Write quincy in Arial Black, or similar font, size 36pt, colour #EFF0E8 with Sharp anti-aliasing:

3. Add a Stroke layer like this:

4. Create a new layer between the Background layer and the quincy layer and name it Border.

5. With the Border layer selected hold down Ctrl and click the quincy layer to select the layer transparency. Select > Modify > Expand and enter 5px. Fill the selection with colour #297FBA:

6. Add a Stroke layer like this:

7. Your image should look like this:

8. Add an Outer Glow layer like this:

9. Your image will now look like this:

10. With the Border layer selected hold down Ctrl and click the Border layer. Choose the Brush Tool, set the mode to Color Dodge, the colour to #FFFFFF, the Master Diameter to 45px, the Hardness to 0px and the Opacity to 20%. You now need to paint 3 lines across the bottom of the border layer. Follow the guidelines from this image:

11. It will look like this:

12. Create a new layer above the quincy layer and name it Highlight. With the Highlight layer selected hold down Ctrl and click the Border layer. Choose Select > Modify > Contract and enter 1px. Fill the layer with colour #FFFFFF and set the Opacity to 40%:

13. Select the Eliptical Marquee Tool and select the bottom half of the canvas like this:

14. Press Delete and you’re finished:

This entry was posted by Tim on Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 at 3:23 pm and is filed under Photoshop, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.