Photoshop Quick Tip: Light Effect Text Button

A few weeks ago I wrote a tutorial showing how to create a stylish metallic button effect using Photoshop. In that tutorial I posted to conclusions and one of them had a light effect in the text. The tutorial was well received and a lot of people wanted to know how to create that effect.

So in this tutorial or quick tip because it's more about layer styles and we will use the base of a previous tutorial, I will show you how to create a super simple light effect using only layer styles, blend modes and the blur filter.

Step 1

Download the PSD from the Stylish Metallic Button in Photoshop tutorial and open it. Hide the symbol in the center of the button so we can create the light effect.

Step 2

With the Horizontal Type Tool (T) add the text you want, I typed START using Impact for the typeface. The color is not really important because we will apply some layer styles to create the effect.

Step 3

Go to Layer>Layer Styles>Color Overlay. Use Blue #5ba0c8 for the color.

Step 4

Select Inner Glow, for the Blend Mode use Color Dodge with 65% Opacity, white for the color, Center for the Source, 4% for the Choke and 10 pixels for the Size. Also change the Range to 52%.

Step 5

Select Outer Glow. Use Screen for the Blend Mode, 42% for the Opacity, blue (#33b5ff) for the Color, 0% for the Spread, 13 pixels for the Size.

Step 6

Select Inner Shadow, then for the Blend Mode use Darker Color with black for the color. For the Opacity use 76% with 127º for the Angle. For the Distance use 2 pixels, 0% for the Choke and 5 pixels for the Size.

Step 7

Now a very important part of the effect, create the scanlines effect. To do that is pretty simple, just create a new document with 10 pixels of width and 2 pixels height. Then create a black rectangle of 10x1 pixels so you will have one line black and another in white. After that go to Edit>Define Pattern. Name your pattern and your are good to go.

Step 8

Create a new layer and fill it with the pattern background, then create a marquee selection of the text by clicking on the thumbnail of the icon holding Command (MAC)/Control (PC)

Step 9

Go to Layer>Layer Mask>Reveal Selection, so the pattern will be visible only within the marquee selection area. After that change the Blend Mode to Overlay.

Step 10

Duplicate the text layer and go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use 10 pixels for the Radius. Then group the layer into a folder and change its blend mode to Soft Light.

Conclusion

You can merge all the layers used to create the button and duplicate them twice, then apply a gaussian blur to both. For the one beneath change the blend mode to Overlay and for one at the top use screen, both at 40% Opacity. After that the light effect is pretty much done.

The cool thing about this effect is that it works amazingly well for texts, but when you have symbols with larger areas you will have to make a few tweeks in the Layer Styles, nothing that will be completely different though.

About the author

Abduzeedo is a blog about design. There are all sorts of articles for those who want to look for inspiration. Also you will find very useful tutorials for the most used applications out there, with a special selection of Photoshop Tutorials and Illustrator Tutorials. You can get in follow us via Twitter at @abduzeedo

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Embroidery Effect with Illustrator and Photoshop

I have received quite a few emails asking me how to create a embroidery effect in Photoshop. It is a really nice effect and I had no idea how to do that in Photoshop. So one of these days while running I sort of had this idea of using the Scribble effect in Illustrator and then going to Photoshop to make it look real. After giving it a try I got a very nice result and that is what I share with you today.

So for this tutorial I will show you how to create a embroidery effect using Illustrator and Photoshop. The whole process is quite simple and it will take an average of 45 minutes to get it done.

Step 1

Open the logo or shape you want to apply the effect in Illustrator. In my case I am using the Abduzeedo logo, the 2011 version.

Step 2

Select the shapes and go to Effect>Stylize>Scribble. The Scribble Options will open and you will be able to customize the settings. The Abduzeedo logo has a sort of 3D effect, so I used different angles for the Scribble direction.

Step 3

Now it's time to go to Photoshop. The first thing to do here is to find a really cool texture. The one I am using is courtesy of Shutterstock and you can find it at http://goo.gl/PNAHF

Place the texture in your design. Again, the texture is really important to make your design look real.

Step 4

Copy the logo from Illustrator and paste it in Photoshop. I aligned it in the center of my canvas.

Step 5

Go to Layer>Layer Styles>Inner Shadow. For the Blend Mode use Color Dodge with white for the color at 45% Opacity. For the Angle use 90º, 3 pixels for the Distance, 0% Opacity and 3 pixels for the Size. Also for the Contour use the one I used in the image below.

Step 6

Select Inner Glow. For the Blend Mode use Linear Burn with black for the color at 40% Opacity and 0% Noise. Change the Size to 8 pixels and keep the rest as it is.

Step 7

Duplicate the layer once and move it up a few pixels and to any size a few pixels as well.

Step 8

Duplicate the layer a few more times and move it to the sides and up and down. The idea is make it look less uniform. After that select all layers and merge them (Layer>Merge Layers)

Step 9

Go to Layer>Layer Styles>Drop Shadow. Use black for the color with Color Burn for the Blend Mode and 50% Opacity. For the Angle use 120º, for the Distance keep 0, for the Spread use 0% and for the Size use 15px.

Step 10

Select Inner Glow and then for the Blend Mode use Color Dodge at 50%, white for the color, Center for the Source, 0 for the Choke and 40 pixels for the Size.

Step 11

This is the result after the layer styles. The whole idea is to create the highlight and the depth that we always see on the embroidery effects.

Step 12

Here I added the Abduzeedo word with the custom font with the same effect. Just repeated the previous steps.

Step 13

Select all layers and duplicate them. After that go to Layer>Merge Layers. You can use the keyboard shortcut for that Command (mac)/Control (pc) + Shit + Alt + E. Then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Change the Blend Mode to Screen.

Conclusion

Go to Layer>Layer Mask>Hide all then with the Brush Tool (B) and a very soft brush with white start painting in the center to make that area visible.

As you can see the technique is pretty simple, it's all about some layer styles and the Scribble effect in Illustrator. There's also another ways to do that, like with custom brushes, but I think the scribble filter does a really good job for a quick result with nice realism.

Download the Photoshop File

Click here to download the Photoshop file used for this tutorial

About the author

Abduzeedo is a blog about design. There are all sorts of articles for those who want to look for inspiration. Also you will find very useful tutorials for the most used applications out there, with a special selection of Photoshop Tutorials and Illustrator Tutorials. You can get in follow us via Twitter at @abduzeedo

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