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Wood Engraved Text Effect

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About this lesson

Add text or a logo and create a great wood texture effect. 

Exercise files

Download the Photoshop file used in the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

Wood Engraved Text Effect.psd
88.6 MB

Quick reference

Topic: Wood Engraved Text

Add text or a logo to a wood texture.

When to use

Add text or a logo and create an great wood texture effect.

Instructions

Getting started

  1. Begin with a texture and open in Photoshop.
  2. Add text use a very thick font.

Add layer Styles to font

  1. Begin blending options and in advanced blending: set fill opacity to 0.

Bevel and Emboss: Blend mode: Overlay, Depth: 200, Direction: down, Size: 30, Angle: 120, Style: Emboss, Technique: Chisel Hard, Highlight Mode: Overlay, Shadow Mode: Multiply, Highlight Opacity: 25%%, Shadow Opacity: 50%, Altitude: 30, Contour Section: Cove Deep, Range: 100%, Texture Section: Metal Landscape pattern, scale:100%, Depth 5%

Inner Shadow: Blend mode: Multiply, Opacity: 75%, Size: 20, Angle: 120, Distance: 40

Outer Glow: Blend mode: Color Burn, Opacity: 15%, Size: 250, Spread: 20%.

Create a 2nd texture layer to alter the color

  1. Duplicate background layer by Command (mac) or Control (Windows) + ‘J’.
  2. Drag it to the top of the layers panel
  3. Hold Command (mac) or Control (Windows) and click on the type layer to use the text as a selection and press the ‘Add Layer Mask’ button.
  4. Add brightness and contrast adjustment layer: Brightness -75%, and contrast 100% clip the adjustment layer to the 2nd texture layer.
  5. Layer styles: Blending Options and in blend if section. With Option or Alt key held down drag the Underlying Layer left slider right to 120.

Add some edge burning

  1. Add a gradient fill adjustment layer.
  2. Select foreground to transparent gradient and set colors to black.
  3. Style: Radial, Angle 90°, Reverse On, Increase Scale.
  4. Bring up Layer styles. Blend mode Linier Burn, Opacity 75%.
  5. Blend If section. With Option or Alt key held down drag the Underlying Layer right slider right to 70. 
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  • 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.

Beer Text Effect
12m:13s
Graffiti Text Effect
9m:00s
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