Wood Engraved Text Effect

Quick reference

• 00:04 We're gonna be engraving text into wood in Photoshop.
• 00:08 Let's go ahead and begin.
• 00:09 So to start off this project, all you really need is a texture.
• 00:13 It can be wood, it could be metal, it could be grass,
• 00:15 it doesn't matter what you want to use, you just need some form of texture.
• 00:19 Now, this texture I'm using here was found over at shutterstock.com.
• 00:23 I do use them because they have really high quality textures.
• 00:26 But of course, you can go to cdtextures.com or
• 00:29 you can even go to Google, to find a texture of your choice.
• 00:32 And the second thing you need is text.
• 00:34 Now, as the case with many of my text-based tutorials,
• 00:38 I always say the thicker the font the better, especially if we're gonna be
• 00:41 adding a bevel and emboss, which we're gonna be adding.
• 00:43 It gives you more room to work with, especially around the edges.
• 00:46 So you don't have a lot of crowding and overlapping going on.
• 00:49 For this project I'm gonna be using the Wood Stevens font which I
• 00:52 found over at dafont.com, dafont.com.
• 00:57 And I am gonna simply type out my word of choice, in this case it will be
• 00:59 my first name, right in the middle of the document, and the color of
• 01:02 the font doesn't matter at this point, cuz we are gonna be setting the fail to zero.
• 01:06 And once you have your text typed out, then we can go ahead and
• 01:08 start adding the layer styles.
• 01:10 Now, when you first double click on your layer to bring up
• 01:12 the layer styles dialogue box.
• 01:14 You wanna stay in the blending options section just for a moment.
• 01:17 Right under advanced blending, we're gonna be setting the fill opacity to zero.
• 01:21 Now you don't wanna set the opacity to zero, which you can find above.
• 01:25 The difference between opacity and fill opacity, if you set the fill opacity to
• 01:29 zero, you'll still be able to see the later styles, which we are about to
• 01:32 add But if you set the opacity to zero, those layer styles will also be affected.
• 01:37 So you won't be able to see them.
• 01:39 So now with that done, let's go ahead and
• 01:40 add some layer styles, let's start with a Bevel & Emboss.
• 01:44 Because we want this text to be engraved into the wood, we're gonna set the Style
• 01:48 at emboss, the technique at chisel hard and the direction to down.
• 01:54 Of course if you wan the text coming out of the wood you
• 01:57 can set the Direction to Up.
• 01:58 Now as for the values,
• 02:00 I'm gonna increase the depth to around 200% and the size to around 30 pixels.
• 02:05 And as always if you're designed on a larger or smaller document with a larger
• 02:09 or smaller font, you may need to adjust the values that you see in this video.
• 02:13 Now down below under shading we're gonna keep the angle and
• 02:15 altitude the same, we're gonna keep the gloss contour the same, but we're gonna be
• 02:19 changing the highlight mode to overlay, and then decreasing the opacity to 25%.
• 02:24 Now, for the shadow mode,
• 02:26 we're gonna keep it at multiply, but we're gonna decrease the opacity to 50%.
• 02:30 Next, to give the engraving a little bit of an edge on the inside,
• 02:34 we're gonna be adding a contour to our bevel.
• 02:36 From the contour picker, go ahead and
• 02:38 select the cove deep contour and then keep the range at whatever it's set to.
• 02:43 Finally, to finish off the bevel, to give it a little bit more of a realistic feel,
• 02:46 we're gonna be adding a texture.
• 02:48 When you're in the pattern picker, it's a good idea to experiment with the different
• 02:51 patterns that are available to see which works best with your document.
• 02:54 But for this design, I'm gonna be selecting the metal landscape pattern,
• 02:57 which is this one right down here, and when that's selected,
• 03:00 I'm gonna leave the scale at 100%.
• 03:02 But I'm gonna decrease the depth to 5%.
• 03:04 I only wanna very subtle texture.
• 03:07 Good, the next thing that we're gonna be adding is an inner shadow to give a little
• 03:10 bit more depth to our design.
• 03:12 I'm going to be keeping the blend mode at Multiply, the Opacity at 75%,
• 03:16 keep the angle at 120 degrees, but
• 03:18 I'm gonna increase the distance to around 40 pixels and the size to around 20.
• 03:23 Again, if you're using a larger or
• 03:24 smaller font, you may need to adjust these values accordingly.
• 03:28 And finally, to finish of the layer styles I'm gonna be adding an outer glow to
• 03:32 interact with the wood surrounding the text.
• 03:35 The blend mode for this outer glow is gonna be set to color burn, and
• 03:38 then I'm gonna decrease the opacity quite a bit to around 15%.
• 03:42 When that is done, I am gonna crank the size all the way up to 250 pixels, and
• 03:46 then increase the spread to around 20%, this will add some nice burning around our
• 03:51 text on the wood behind it, and that will do it for the layer styles.
• 03:55 It is looking okay, but it is far from complete.
• 03:57 What we are going to do now is we are going to make a duplicate of
• 04:00 our wood texture layer and place it inside of our text layer, so
• 04:04 we can alter the color a little bit.
• 04:06 So go ahead and make your background layer active and with your command or control
• 04:09 key held down press the letter j on your keyboard to make a copy of that layer.
• 04:14 And once it's been duplicated you can simply drag it right above your
• 04:17 text layer that we just worked on, and
• 04:19 once it's in place we need to place this texture inside of the text.
• 04:22 Now there are two ways of doing so,
• 04:24 you can either add a clipping mask, or you can add a layer mask.
• 04:27 In many cases, I would just go for a clubbing mask.
• 04:30 But because the text layer has a bunch of layer styles on it,
• 04:32 and because we're gonna be working with the blend If controls,
• 04:35 I'm gonna be adding a layer mask for this example.
• 04:38 So you'll wanna go ahead and turn your text into a selection.
• 04:40 You can very easily do this, by holding down your command key on the Mac, control
• 04:44 key on Windows, and clicking on the type layers thumbnail in your layers panel.
• 04:48 You should see the marching ants running around your text.
• 04:51 Once that's done, press the add layer mask button at the bottom of your
• 04:53 layers panel to hide everything else outside of that selection.
• 04:57 Now, to alter the color of this texture, we're gonna be adding a brightness and
• 05:00 contrast adjustment layer.
• 05:02 Of course you can add a levels or curves adjustment layer, but brightness and
• 05:05 contrast is a very simple adjustment layer and it does the trick.
• 05:09 When the adjustment layer has been added, you can adjust the brightness and
• 05:11 contrast in your Properties panel to get the result that you're looking for.
• 05:15 In this case, I'm gonna be darkening up the texture.
• 05:17 So I'm gonna be decreasing the brightness to around negative 75, and
• 05:19 then, I'm gonna crank up the contrast all the way to 100.
• 05:24 Now, you may be noticing that this adjustment layer is
• 05:26 affecting the whole entire image.
• 05:28 We don't want that, we only want it to affect the texture that we just added.
• 05:31 So at the bottom of the properties panel, you're gonna wanna press this icon right
• 05:34 here, which is gonna clip that adjustment layer to the texture layer right below it.
• 05:38 And that's looking a little bit better.
• 05:40 But you might be noticing that the inner shadow that we added is no longer visible,
• 05:44 so what's going on, and how do we fix this?
• 05:47 Well, there are a few things that we can do, including changing the blend mode.
• 05:49 But if you've seen some of my past text-based tutorials, I love using blend
• 05:53 if, which allows us to blend this texture with the tones of the layer underneath it.
• 05:58 So if you double-click on the new texture layer to bring up the layer styles
• 06:01 dialogue box, take a look at the bottom of the window,
• 06:04 you'll see the blend if section.
• 06:06 And in this case, we wanna blend this texture with the texture underneath it
• 06:09 which is the underlying layer.
• 06:11 Now if I were to simply drag the shadow slider of the underlying layer to
• 06:14 the right, I'm gonna get a very harsh result.
• 06:16 So what I want to do, is I want split the slider to give a much more gradual result.
• 06:21 So with my Option key on the Mac or Alt key in Windows held down,
• 06:24 I'm going to drag the right side of the shadow slider to the right until I
• 06:28 have a nice blend, somewhere around 120 should work well.
• 06:31 And you'll see that we can now see that inner shadow that we added earlier.
• 06:34 Now, if you chose to use a lighter or
• 06:36 darker texture, you may need to play around with the sliders a little bit.
• 06:39 You may need to drag it a little more to the right, a little bit less, or
• 06:42 you may need to drag the highlight slider instead of the shadow slider.
• 06:46 When creating designs like this, it's all about experimentation.
• 06:49 Now the final thing I'm gonna be adding to this design is a gradient fill
• 06:52 adjustment layer.
• 06:53 So I wanna make sure I have the top-most layer selected and then add
• 06:57 the gradient fill adjustment layer from the adjustment layer button at the bottom.
• 07:00 I'm basically gonna be using this to add a little bit of vignette or
• 07:03 burning around the edges of my textures.
• 07:05 So for my gradient I wanna start with the foreground to transparent gradient and
• 07:09 if the colors are not set to black, go ahead and click on the gradient to
• 07:12 bring up the gradient editor and then set both colors to black.
• 07:15 And then once that's set I'm gonna set the style to radial,
• 07:18 the angle to 90 degrees and then I'm gonna turn on reverse at the bottom so
• 07:22 the vignette is around the edges and not in the middle.
• 07:25 And then you may want to increase the scale so
• 07:26 the vignette is only around the edges of your textures.
• 07:29 Now to blend the gradient in a little bit better with the background, we're gonna be
• 07:33 changing the blend mode and we're also gonna be working with blend If again.
• 07:36 So double click on the gradient fill adjustment layer to bring up the layer
• 07:39 styles again, and we're gonna change the blend mode to linear burn and
• 07:42 then decrease the opacity to about 75%.
• 07:46 Now again, at the bottom we can work with our blend if controls, now for
• 07:49 this one we are going to be blending with the highlights of the underlying layer, so
• 07:52 hold down Alt or Option, and drag the left side of the highlight slider to the left,
• 07:56 somewhere around 70 should work well.
• 07:58 And that will give our gradient a nice blend with the background, and
• 08:01 should finish off our design.
• 08:03 So in a few very simple steps, you have now taken your text and
• 08:05 engraved it into the texture of your choice.
• 08:08 As I mentioned, designs like this are all about experimentation.
• 08:12 You may not like the final result that you see here, but
• 08:14 with different textures and different layer styles,
• 08:16 you can get a completely different result that you might like a little bit better.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.