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Home»Text Effect»Create an Awesome 3D Text Effect with Abstract Brush Decoration in Photoshop
Text Effect

Create an Awesome 3D Text Effect with Abstract Brush Decoration in Photoshop

By James QuAugust 1, 20105 Mins Read
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In the tutorial, I will show you the processes I used to Create an Awesome 3D Text Effect with Abstract Brush Decoration in Photoshop. This is an intermediate tutorial so some steps can be tricky, but why not have a try :)

Here is a preview of the final effect for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

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You will need the following stock to complete this tutorial:

Any Grunge Brushset

Font

OK let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document sized 740px * 1050px, fill the background layer with black colour. Create a new layer called “texture” and paint some grunge texture onto it:

Duplicate this texture layer once, resize it as shown below:

Erase the corners of the duplicated layer with a big soft brush:

you will have the following effect:

Step 2

Now let’s add a big 3D text onto it. If you have illustrator, use it to render a 3D text. If not, you can download this PSD file and use it for this tutorial.

Place the text to the position shown below, name the layer as “big text”:

Apply the following layer blending option to it:

Color Overlay

Gradient Overlay

you will have the following effect:

Add the following mask to this big text layer:

you will have the following effect:

Also create a new clipping mask layer, grab a big soft white brush to add a highlight to the top-left corner of the big text:

Step 3

Create a layer called “cloud” under the big text layer, use either cloud brush or rendered cloud, to the positions shown below:

Also add a highlight layer with a big soft white brush from the top-left corner:

I also decided to add a bit of splashing effect to the text. So grab a 1px hard brush, apply the following brush dynamics to it:

Shape Dynamics

Scattering

Other Dynamics

Tick the “Airbrush”, “Smoothing” and “Protect Texture” options.

Use this brush and paint some dots to the positions shown below:

You can also add a ray of light on top of the big text to spice things up. To do this, use a soft white brush to do a single-click, then distort it as shown below:

Warp it after the distortion, try to bend the bottom to create a curvy shape:

Position this light on the top right corner of the big text:

Step 4

Now let’s add some variety to the text. Duplicate the big text layer once, cancel the color overlay blending option, resize and position it as shown below:

Add a dark light for the text, painted it with a black soft brush to the position shown below:

Carefully painting some shadow under the text, with a soft black brush:

Duplicate the big text layer once more, resize it and position the layer to the top-left, as shown below:

Add a highlight layer with a soft white brush (single-click to the position shown below):

Carefully paint some shadow under the text, same as the previous step:

Create a new layer called “big text shadow” on top of all previous layer, and grab a big soft brush with black colour, paint some shadow to the bottom of the text, as shown below”

you will have the following effect:

Step 5

Now let’s make another custom brushset. Create a new document sized 40px * 100px, add a new layer and fill it with black colour, hit Ctrl + A and select this new layer:

Go to Edit > Define Brush Preset and create a new brushset:

Then apply the following brush dynamics:

Shape Dynamics

Scattering

Other Dynamics

Tick the “Airbrush”, “Smoothing”, “Protect Texture” options.

Create a new layer just below the original text layer, and start painting. (try different brush size as you go, apply the following smart sharpen filter once you’re done painting)

you will have the following effect:

You can see we also have some see-through effect on the text, because of the layer mask on the big text layer we added earlier:

Step 6

OK we’re almost done. For some final touchups, I added two image adjustment layers on top:

Curves

Color Balance

Layer Mask of Color Balance adjustment layer:

and you will have the following effect:

For add some motions into the images, we can flatten the image, duplicate the background layer once and apply the following motion blur settings to it:

Change the layer blending mode of this blur layer to “Screen” and layer opacity to around 60%, then add the following layer mask on it:

Here is the final effect for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

That’s it for this Photoshop tutorial! Hope you enjoy it and find it useful. Until next time, have a great day!

3D abstract effect photoshop text tutorial
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James Qu
  • Website

James is a seasoned Photoshop expert with over 25 years of experience, mastering the software since its 5.0 version. As the driving force behind PSD Vault, he authors the majority of its in-depth tutorials and insightful articles.

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24 Comments

  1. Assem on August 2, 2010 12:53 AM

    Awesome tut
    I Love your tuts

  2. chuckles on August 5, 2010 12:11 AM

    Well done. Would love to see more from you.

    Thanks for the tut!!

  3. Bratu Sebastian on August 5, 2010 6:56 AM

    Now, that was totally awesome ! The result is very ‘advertising’ like !

  4. Love malhotra on August 6, 2010 5:08 PM

    Thanxs for giving this type of lovely tutorial

  5. yu wen on August 10, 2010 10:51 PM

    Fantastic, although I am Chinese, English is hard to read, but still very support

  6. Ridik on August 18, 2010 8:40 PM

    WOW thank u…

  7. karamdiab on August 19, 2010 4:38 AM

    Wow..great awsome tut !!!..im trying to do it now ….

  8. jydonika on August 23, 2010 8:55 PM

    this is superb

  9. Brushesbee on September 6, 2010 3:14 PM

    Very Nice! looks Unique, Thanks for sharing.

  10. David on October 5, 2010 1:43 AM

    The piece looks great, but you’re very vague in your tutorial.

  11. Gino on October 19, 2010 3:09 AM

    very interesting I cant imagine how simple you make life for people around the world. I am coversant with photoshop and ilustrator among others but what you have dont here is real creativiy….I love it…I just love it!!!

  12. Gilz on November 3, 2010 12:59 AM

    Aaaah this is really cool but I’m stuck at addin that layer mask in step 2 -.-“

  13. santho on November 3, 2010 2:28 AM

    i love this tutorial….but i try to do this…

  14. ibrahem on November 10, 2010 6:58 AM

    very nice ^_^

  15. Troy on December 15, 2010 5:06 AM

    This one looks great too, the shape dynamics feature will definitely come in handy when I create a custom background for my site. Thanks for the tutorial.

  16. Logomondo on December 31, 2010 10:36 PM

    Another fantastic tutorial . Your site is always fascinating. Keep it up. =D

  17. psdpresets on January 26, 2011 2:57 AM

    Very nice!

  18. Ulises Bolivar on February 6, 2011 8:47 AM

    interesante tutorial

  19. Michelle on February 15, 2011 11:38 AM

    Just tried the tutorial for myself it was a lot of fun and very effective when I got to the finished result. Although I do agree with a previous review some parts of the tutorial are very vague but all in all I did learn some new techniques. Thank you for the tutorial. Also which version of Photoshop was this made in?

  20. Tomeka Doughman on June 30, 2011 6:02 PM

    I was aware of this previously, nevertheless there have been some helpful pieces that completed the image for me, thanks for your time!

  21. PSD Vault on July 1, 2011 6:31 AM

    No problem, glad you enjoyed it:)

  22. amin on December 18, 2011 7:03 PM

    thanks very much

  23. usman on June 22, 2012 3:26 AM

    i found this sit e just awesome :)

  24. Cius Bandicoot on August 2, 2017 5:07 PM

    Wow

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