Eshark Design

How to make text become more interesting instead of just boring solid black, here’s one of the technique which I’ll share with you guys which I think very cool..

STEP 1 : Open a new document, (File>New) or press (Mac: Apple+N / PC: ctrl+N). Set the background to White, for this tutorial I name the document as ‘My Text’.

STEP 2 : You need to choose a correct character, normally I use thicker + bolder characters like Arial Black, Myriad Bold, Anja Elaine. I start the tutorial with Arial Black, very common character install on most every computer. Type the word you prefer using ‘Type Tool’ (press T). In this tutorial I choose a word ‘Sabah’.. it’s a name of a wonderful place in Borneo, well this is where I stay. Set the color to Black by selecting from the Characters pallete (Window>Character) or press (Mac: Apple+T / PC: ctrl+T)

STEP 3 : Now, you need to choose 5 different nice pictures to be crop on the text for each letter (depending on how many letters you have on the wording). Here I choose some beautiful pictures from my homeland, Sabah (actually there’s alot).

STEP 4 : Open the first picture and simply Drag the picture using ‘Move Tool’ (press V) on top of the text layer. Name this layer as ‘S’ means the first letter for SABAH and make sure this layer is on top of the first layer.

At this point your layers pallete should look like this.

STEP 5 : Set the picture Fill to 50% (depending how best you want) so that you can see both the picture & the wording. Scale the picture size to get a good composition with the wording, once you’ve satisfied then press ENTER. Move using ‘Move Tool’ (press V) while ‘Scale’ (Edit>Transform>Scale) or press (Mac: Apple+T / PC: ctrl+T).

Tips : While scaling the picture, dont scale up only scale down as you will damage the quality of the picture.

STEP 6 : Click the text layer while pressing (’Apple’ for Mac / ‘ctrl’ for PC) and then you’ll see a line around the wording. Now you need to select only the first letter, to do this, using Rectangular Marquee Tool (press M) deselect all 4 letters (A, B, A & H) except letter ‘S’, while deselect press (’option’ for Mac/’alt’ for PC) and you see a minus (-) symbol on the Rectangular Marquee Tool icon. Now you’ll see only ‘S’ is selected.

STEP 7 : Now, select Inverse (Select>Inverse) (Mac: Apple+shift+I / PC: ctrl+shift+I) and you’ll see the line around the wording is reversed. Then, on the ‘S’ Layer, press DELETE..and see the effect. At this point You’ll see the letter ‘S’ is merge together with the first picture.

STEP 8 : Follow Step 5 to 8 to complete all other 4 letters using a different pictures. Do it carefully take your time. Make sure to name all the layers with A, B, S & H for each picture. After all 5 pictures been crop with all letters, the Layers pallete should look like this.

STEP 9 : Now you see one nice wording with nice pictures on it.. but it still looks not so alive, seems flat! Okay here’s the secret!

On the ‘S’ layer, click the ‘Add a layer style’ at the bottom of the layer pallete then choose ‘Bevel and Emboss’. Set the Depth to 300% (depending how deep you want), Size is set to 5px not to much, while on Shading section, set the Highlight Mode to Normal and Shadow Mode leave it Multiply.

STEP 10 : Lastly, add another layer style by selecting ‘Outer Glow’, set the Blend Mode to Normal and change the color to Black. You can set also the Opacity to be how best you want, for this tutorial I set to 75%.

STEP 11 : Complete all layer style for all the remaining 4 letters. Of course I dont ask you to follow STEP 10 to 11 in order to complete all remaining 4 characters (imagine if you have more than 10 letters to go). Just drag the layer style from the first layer to the second layer..and so on, as simple as that.

Now you have a very nice decorative wording (well.. actually that depends on how creative you make the croping effect with the wordings). Enjoy yourself + Play!!.. till we meet up next Friday.

Now.. this is what I call pictures that talk by itself.

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