Design an Awesome Starry Text Effect In Photoshop

Posted on December 20th, 2008 under Drawing, Text Effects, it has 39 Comments and 35,094 Views so far.

In this tutorial, I am going to show you the steps I took to create this awesome starry text effect in Photoshop. The inspiration of this text effect comes from the EA game “Dead Space”.

Together we will practice some brush techniques, layer blending options, selection techniques and applying various filter effects.

Below is a previous of the final result:

All right let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1000×400px, you can adjust this ratio to suit your computer screen. Fill the Background layer with Black.

Choose a font you like, I use this font from dafont.com. Type some texts onto the document and position the text as below:

Name this layer as “Text”.

Step 2

On the “Text” layer, apply the following layer blending options:

Inner Shadow

Outer Glow

Inner Glow

Bevel and Emboss

Gradient Overlay

Stroke

This effect so far will look like this:

Step 3

Ok here comes the tricky bit :)

Use Ctrl + Left Mouse Click the select the text, then create a new layer on top of the “Text” Layer and call this layer “Star”. Fill the “Star” layer with Black colour and position it according to the image below:

Keep the selection alive and go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and apply the following settings:

Optional: if you feel there is way too many star/noise, hit Ctrl + L to bring up the Level Adjustment Tool and apply the following settings:

When you finish everything with the “Star Layer”, change the layer blending option to “Soft Light” and you will have the following image:

Step 4

Create a new layer and name it “Star 2″, grab a 9px round soft brush and apply the following brush settings:

Shape Dynamics

Scattering

Texture

Dual Brush

After applying the brush settings, use it to paint gently over the text (see below image):

Step 5

Now we’re gonna add some nebula effect on the text.

To do this, create a new layer and name it “Nebula”, use the Lasso Tool with a 20px feather, select the surrounding area of the text (Tip: you can hold down the “Shift” Key while selecting and this will add to your existing selection)

Fill the selection with black colour. Go to Filter > Render > Cloud (choose white as foreground colour and black as background colour) and render some cloud.

Then hit Ctrl + L to bring up the level tool again, apply the following settings:

Drag the “Nebula” layer below all previous layers (but above the background layer) and set its fill opacity to around 80%.

The effect so far looks like:

That’s it for this tutorial! The rest is left upon your own creativity! You can add some more textures in, or create another layer with some colour over it. That’s totally up to you!

Below is my final image for this tutorial:

Hope you enjoy this tutorial and as usual, if you have any question, feel free to drop me a line!

Cheers and have a nice day!

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39 Comments

Cyberboy Says:
im not satisfied with this tutorial.. There are a lot of things didn’t mention.
James Says:
Hi Cyberboy
If you could specify the part you’re stuck with, I could perhaps explain that part in a bit more detail for you :)
Joidiamonds Says:
wow great tutorial, very easy to follow turned out great! thanks!
Tom Says:
Let us in on how you diid the cloud textures and colors.
James Says:
Hi Joidamonds~ no problem! thanks for your comment!
James Says:
Hi Tom~

it’s easy! You simply grab a big round brush and choose some colour (you may also want to reduce the brush opacity and flow to about 50%), create a new layer and set the blending mode to “Overlay” or “Soft Light”, then just paint over the text!
Tom Says:
Very good. Where did you learn these things?
Kanukati.Mithilesh Says:
awesome effect
but tell me how to set the brushes
when i click brushes from window menu
it can been showing all the brushes
Tom Says:
Select brush tool, then look under menu that has FILE, EDIT, ETC. and there you see a bar that shows BRUSHES/MODE/ETC. set it there.
wout Says:
eeumm…
u says left mouse click + control i do it nothing happens please help D=
Tom Says:
Hold down CTL button, then click on the TEXT layer…not at the same time and not left click followed by the CTL button…the order is:

hold down CTL and then click on the text layer (don’t click on the layer name, click on the lsmall thumbnail square to the left of the layer name).
spice Says:
great job dude
James Says:
Thanks Tom for your answer to those questions~
And Tom, I learnt those things through looking at other people’s tutorial on the net and play with them :)
James Says:
Hey spice~ thanks for your comment~
seeku Says:
hiiiiiiiiiiiii dude thanks a lot but i want to get final colored img as like u designed give me the same tips what u have done
James Says:
hi seeku
with the colours I basically create a new layer on top of every other layer and set it to overlay blending mode, then use a big round brush and paint on this layer.
Hope this helps :)
s.udaya kumar Says:
extra ordinary ……. super …….. i sulute for your work
Nicolas Says:
mmmm NOT satisfied… the last part when you apply the nebula doesent look the same in my draft…:(
I personaly hate when is not well explained…
James Says:
Hi Nicolas, the nebula won’t look the same simply because the clouds are rendered differently.

I think you could perhaps try a different level adjustment setting see what result that brings you.

Hope this helps!
BILAL Says:
HI MAN ITS SO GOOOOOD Photoshop
سكرابز Says:
good
saleena Says:
I don’t like this tutorial. You do not explain things well. Especially the whole ctr + left click thing in step three. You need to be more specific.
admin Says:
Hi Saleena! i’m sorry i didn’t explain this part clearly enough, this is one of my earliest work here on psdvault.com :)
Try this link: http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/Photoshop/10.0/WSBB7A7447-383C-40e3-971F-88F5AB2DCB6A.html
That will explain more for loading selection in Photoshop CS3.
Kyla Says:
The tutorial you’ve created was extremely impressive and I’ve followed along with your instructions and got it right. I must omit I’ve learned more hands on studying the tutorials online than buying the photoshop books. Thanks to your great work and the rest of the experts for putting up free tutorials. Keep it up, thanks.
Logos Says:
Looks nice. I think it might be better with a different font. I’m not so crazy about that one. It feels too ridged to me.
Business Card Printing Says:
This is very space age! I really like your technique on how to make the nebula, pretty cool! Thanks for sharing this tutorial.
Briget Says:
Hi James. Great tutorial. However I have tried to contact you but as of yet no reply. I made a paypal payment for a file a few days ago but have not received it as of yet.

Look forward to hearing from you. : )

Thanks.

Briget.
admin Says:
@Briget: I have sent the PSD file to your nominated paypal account twice with two different email addresses of mine since the payment was received. Perhaps they are in your junk mail folder or being blocked?

Please check your junkmail folder and let me know. Thanks.
admin Says:
@Bridget: it seems the file hosting service i’m using is down at the moment. I have sent you another email with the PSD file attached. Cheers.
Briget Says:
Thanks James. Sorry about the mix up. Any way gave it a go and for someone whose pretty naff with photoshop at the moment I’m quite pleased with the result.

Thanks again.
huwaw69 Says:
hahah its like the effect i saw in transformers, this is great all i have to do now is to color it… thanks
Xpression Says:
thx dude…awesome indeed !
Status Says:
hey man LOVE this tut!! i just love the outcome!!

i added a few extras of my own too :P

Heres a link for it!

http://i715.photobucket.com/albums/ww155/Kaos_GFX/Starry.jpg
Justin Says:
Hey, how do I edit the paintbrush? I got the 9px size, but I dont know how to do the other edits?
Ahmed Says:
really man i liked this turtioal i learned a lot from
u thx man
SarahL Says:
What font did you use?