Design a Snowy Rock Text Effect in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will demonstrate the processes I used to design this snowy rock text effect in Photoshop. The inspiration of this design came from a snowy mountain photo I saw the other day, and I thought I could create a similar text effect which might look interesting!
Along the way, we will use various layer blending options, some selection techniques, a number of filter effects and brush dynamics. It’s a simple tutorial suitable for Photoshop beginners. Have a try :)
Here is a preview of  my final image for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

Here is alternative version which I added a bit of cloud and colour onto it:

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document sized 800 x 800 px, fill the background layer with Black Colour.
Let’s create some lighting effect for the background to work with. Use the Gradient Tool (G) tool and select the Radial Gradient options, Fill the background layer as shown below:

Step 2

Download a copy of this font from dafont.com and type some texts onto the background layer. Resize (if necessary) and position it in the centre of the canvas:

On the text layer, apply the following layer blending options:
Drop Shadow

Inner Shadow

Outer Glow

Inner Glow

Bevel and Emboss

Gradient Overlay

Here is the effect so far:

Step 3

Donwload a copy of this rock image from cgtextures.com and load it into Photoshop.  Then go back to our document and load the selection of the our text layer (holding down your Ctrl key and left-click on the thumbnail of the text layer in the layer palette):

Then drag the selection onto the rock image we just loaded:

Copy and paste the selection back to our text document and name the newly created layer “rock texture”.  You will see the following effect:

Step 4

Duplicate the “rock texture” layer once.  Hide the duplicated layer for now.
Go back to  the original rock texture layer, apply the following Black and White adjustment options:

Change the blending option of this layer to “Screen”.
Unhide the “rock texture copy” layer, change its blending option to “overlay”. The effect now should look like this:

Step 5

Pfrom the previous step, we can see the white part of the text looks like snow, but it is not realistic enough in my opinion and we can add some more texture to make it look better!
To do this, download a copy of this snow image from cgtextures.com and load it into Photoshop. Then Go back to our text document and use the same method described in Step 3 to load the text selection. This time we go one step further with the text selection: select the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M), hold down the Alt key and at the same time draw a rectangular selection for the lower part of the text. (We would like to preserve this part of the rock texture and leave the upper part for the snowy effect)
The selection will now look like this:

Hit Alt + Ctrl + D and assign a 10px feather to the selection. Drag this selection onto the snow image we just loaded, copy and paste some snow back to our text document:

If you feel there isn’t enough snow on the text, you can use the Clone Stamp Tool (S) with a small soft brush to clone some more: (Tip: load the selection of the text again, and clone inside the selection so the snow won’t go beyond the text border)

Name this layer as “snow texture” and apply the following Curves adjustment settings:

The effect so far will look like this:

Step 6

To add a bit more dynamic to the text effect, we can simply create a new layer called “falling snow”, grab a 3px soft round brush with the following brush dynamics:


Also Tick the “Smoothing” option.
On the “falling snow”, use this brush to paint around the text layer as shown below:

To add a bit of softness to the falling snow, we can duplicate the “falling snow” layer once and apply the following Gaussian Blur settings:

The effect will now look like this:

Ok that’s pretty much it for this tutorial. I added some more rocky texture down the bottom, also did minor adjustment for hue and saturation and alter the angle of the text.
Here is my final image for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

Here is alternative version which I added a bit of cloud and colour onto it:

You can of course further enhance this text effect by applying some more filter effects, or combining it with some background texture, that’s totally up to you :)
Hope you enjoy this tutorial, drop me a comment if you have any question, I will try my best to help you out.
Cheers and have a nice day!

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Design a God of War III Inspired Cracked Text Effect in Photoshop

n this tutorial, I will show the processes involved in designing a God of War III Inspired Cracked Text Effect in Photoshop. I personally have been a fan of the God of War Series for a long time and got the inspiration for this tutorial from the game title text effect, and thought I could make a tut for it :)
Along the way, I would like to show you the use of custom brushsets in Photoshop and how to use them to create eye-catching effect for your design work. There are also techinques such as layer blending mode, masking and image adjustments. Have a go!
Here is a preview of the final text effect for this tutorial:

Alternative version:

Let’s get started!
To complete this tutorial, you will need to the following stocks:
Grunge Brushset
Font
Crack Brushset

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1200px * 800px, fill the background layer with Black colour. Create a new layer called “background texture” on top of the background layer, and we’re going to do some painting with the Grunge Brushset we have just downloaded.
Firstly we want to load the brushset into Photoshop. To do this, press the “B” key to select the Brush Tool, and following the steps as shown in the following screenshot:
1. Click the down arrow next to the Brush shape/size
2. Click the right arrow on the top right corner of the brush palette
3. Click the “Load Brushes” option on the menu

After this, you will see a window pop-up and simply select the Grunge Brush set you just downloaded/extracted, and you will see those brushes appear in the palette as shown below:

(The yellow highlighted part indicates the brushset we have just loaded)
So now we have a set of grunge textures we can use to create our background texture. On the “background texture” layer, use those brushsets we just loaded and paint some irregular, grungy patterns on it:
(Hint: don’t just stick with one brush, try out a combination of them and adjust the flow and opacity for each different brushset, experiment and see what result that bring you)
Here is what I have after a bit of painting with the grunge brushset:

Step 2

Now we have a grungy style background texture. Let’s type some text onto it by using the font we downloaded at the start of this tutorial:

On this text layer, apply the following layer blending options:
Drop Shadow

Inner Shadow

Bevel and Emboss

Gradient Overlay (Hint: you can adjust the position of the gradient by left-click and drag on the text)

And you will have the following effect:

Duplicate this text layer once and make the text look bolder and thicker:

Step 3

Load the selection of the text layer (if you’re not sure how to do so, please take a look at Step 3 of my previous post) and create a new layer called “crack texture”. While maintaining the selection,  load the “Crack brushset” into Photoshop and on the “crack texture” layer, use this brushset to paint  over it.
You will see because we keep the selection active, the crack texture appears only within the selection:

Duplicate the “crack texture” layer once and change the blending mode of the duplcated layer to “Multiply”, you will have the following effect (the crack texture darkened) :

To create some more variation to the crack, we can add some more layers and on each added layer, apply a different crack texture from the brushset, and set the layer blending mode to “overlay”.
You can add as many layer as you wish, here is what I have after adding two more layers of crack texture:

Step 4

Now we can some colour on the text. To do this, load the selection of the text layer again, create a new layer on top of all other layers called “colour overlay”.
Here is the tricky bit: What I would like to achieve is some colour variation, so I use the Lasso Tool with a 10px feather, substract the upper portion of the selection off by holding down the Alt Key while making the selection:

While maintaining the selection, pick a colour and a soft round brush, and paint inside the selection:

Load the text layer again, create a new layer above the previous colour overlay layer, this time choose a lighter colour and soft brush, paint it on the upper portion of the text:

Step 5

Now we can add some adjustment layers to bring out some colour contrast and lightness for the overall effect. I added the following two adjustment layers (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > …)
Levels

Curves

And here is the final effect for this text effect: (Click to enlarge)

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! You can of course add some of your own texture or filter effect and see what the end results are! Remember to always keep your own creativity!
Here is an alternative version I have: (click to enlarge)

Hope you enjoy this tutorial, drop me a comment if you have any question, I will try my best to help you out.
Cheers and have a nice day!

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