Create glossy coloured text in Photoshop

November 9, 2008 at 11:47 am, Category: Photoshop, by admin

Whilst designing a simple email template, the use of this glossy coloured text gave my design the visual boost it needed.

To create the effect firstly add your text to your document in the typeface and colour of your choice.

TIP – for this effect to appear at its best I recommend using heavy fonts styles, I used Tahoma Bold although Franklyn Gothic Heavy is a good alternative.

Right click on the text layer in the layer window and select ‘blending options’.

Apply the following styles:

When applying the gradient overlay, click on the gradient colour bar to display the gradient editor. Now you can change the colour stops to colours of your choice.

TIP – use a darker hue for stop 1 and a lighter hue for stop 2.

Complete the style by adding a stroke.

You should have something that looks like this…

Next, select the pen tool and draw a zig-zag shape across your text joining the ends up at the end.

Right click on the shape and choose ‘make selection’ from the box that appears.

Create and select a new layer and name it ‘overlay’. Drag the shape layer into the bin.

Set your foreground to your lightest hue and the background to white then select the gradient tool and choose the to foreground to background option.
Drag the cursor from the top of the selection to the bottom.

Right click on the text layer to select the text pixels.

Select the ‘overlay’ layer then choose select > inverse from the menu and press delete.

Finally right click on the layer and make the following opacity change to the blending options.

That’s it!… you should now have some nice glossy coloured text.