Design a Cool Abstract-Style Shattered Text Effect in Photoshop

Posted on January 24th, 2009 under Abstracts, Text Effects, it has 31 Comments and 32,086 Views so far.

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create this really cool, abstract style shattered text effect with Broken Glass Texture in Photoshop.

Together, we will explore various layer blending options, image adjustment and some basic selection techniques. I also included a nice link containing a list of “Clean Text” which you might find useful for your design project.

It’s not a complicate tutorial in my opinion, however the effect looks rather cool. Have a go :)

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

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document size 900 * 700px. Then create a new layer named “Gradient Fill” on top of the background layer. On this layer, we can create some background lighting effect.

On the “Gradient Fill” layer, fill it with #494949 colour, then press “G” key to select the Gradient Tool, use the Radial gradient option and fill the layer with the following colours: (Make sure you select the “Foreground colour to transparent” option as well)

Step 2

Type some texts on top of the “Gradient Fill” layer. This will automatically create a new layer, call it “text”.

As for font choice, I would suggest you use some clean fonts to maxmise the effect. Here is a nice collection of clean font and you can choose from: Clean font showcase. From the list, I chose this font for the tutorial.

Position the text as shown below:

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

Drop shadow

Bevel and Emboss

Gradient Overlay

The effect so far will look like this:

Step 3

Now can apply the Broken Glass Texture on the text to create shattered effect.

Download a copy of this Broken Glass Texture image (image 1) from CG Texture. Load it into Photoshop. Go back to our document and load the selection of the text layer (To do this, hold down the Ctrl key and left click the thumbnail image of the text layer in the layer palette).

Drag the selection onto the Broken Glass Texture you’ve just downloaded, copy and paste a portion of the texture back to our document. This will create a new layer on top of the “Text” layer, name it as “Glass Texture”.

Change the layer blending option of this texture layer to “Overlay” and you will have the following effect:

Step 4

On the “Glass Texture” layer, apply the following Black and White adjustments:

Then hit Ctrl + J and duplicate this texture layer 5-6 times and you will have the following effect:

Step 5

Now we have a shattered text, then I thought: umm, perhaps it will be nice to add some water drop on top of it? I guess that will be an interesting effect.

So I downloaded a copy of this image from CG Texture and load it into Photoshop. Go back to our document and load the text selection again, drag it onto the water drop texture, copy and paste a portion of that texture image back onto our text document.

This will again generate a new layer, name it as “Water Drop Texture”.

Change the layer blending option to “Soft Light”, again we duplicate the “Water Drop Layer” 5-6 times, and you will have the following effect:

Step 6

To add a bit of flavour onto the effect, we can create a new layer called “Cloud”, use the Lasso Tool with 40px feather, make a selection around the texture and render some cloud: (Set foreground colour to White, background to Black):

Change the layer blending option of this cloud layer to “Hard Light” and you will have the following effect:

Step 7

Download a copy of this image and load it into Photoshop. Copy and paste the entire image onto our document and place it just a above the background layer, but below all other layers. Name this layer as “Glass Shattering”.

Hide the “Gradient Fill” layer for now.

Duplicate the “Glass Shattering” layer a couple times, and on each duplicated layer, use the Free Transform tool (Ctrl + T) to rotate, resize and distort the texture to make some more shattering effect:

Merge the duplicated layers and apply the following Black and White Adjustments:

You will have the following effect as a result:

Step 8

Now we can add some colour overlay on top of the text. A quick way to do this is to create a new layer on top of all other layers and set the blending mode to “Color Dodge”, then grab a big soft round brush with some colour of your choice, and simply paint over the text.

The result effect will look like this:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! You can apply some more texture onto the text itself, or add some background texture, that’s totally up to you :)

Here is my final image for this tutorial: (Click to Enlarge)

If you have any questions, just drop me a comment :)

Cheers and have a nice day!

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31 Comments

psaddict Says:
Added to http://www.psaddict.com
Kayty Says:
Is there a way to do step 4 and 7 in Photoshop CS2? Or an addon that you know of that will do it? I have looked for hours looking for a way to do it another way. But I can’t find anything.
Matt Says:
Hey, I can tell that you have an extensive knowledge of photoshop and that you know what your doing, but I’ve seen alot of your text effect tutorials and can’t help but notice and feel that they are all extremely similar.

It just seems like most of your effects are just variations of each other, it would be nice if you would mix it up every now and then.

Don’t take this to critically if you even read it, I might be totally wrong, but just my opinion.
Steve Says:
Great tut. I love your website though in the directions for bevel and gradient you used the same picture twice.
James Says:
@kayty, you can use Channel Mixer located in Image > Adjustment > Channel Mixer, tick the monochrome option and that will desaturate the image.

Or you could perhaps just desaturate the image first, then use either level or curves tool to adjust the B&W contrast.

Hope this helps
James Says:
@matt, hey thanks very much for your comment! In fact I would love to hear from all you guys and get feedbacks on my tutorials! so i could improve in the future.

Thank you very much for your input!
btw, can I ask are you a professional graphic/web designer?
James Says:
@steve: thank you so much for pointing this out! I corrected it just now :P
Steve Says:
pleasure man =)
Kyle Says:
hey, im just wondering if you could do this for me, im not too sure how to do most of it and i was wondering if you could make one for meh saying ” OMNISCAPE” in the same font as tutorial
Stewart Says:
can you please explain step 7 in full detail, cuz im a total noob :$
or if anyone can make on but to say “TRANCE” ? Your help is appreciated :)
admin Says:
hi stewart, with step 7, all you need to do is load the image into Photoshop and drag it onto our document, put the newly-created layer just above the background layer, and duplicate + free-transform the duplicated layer so they have different shape/size, then merge them and apply the black and white adjustments on the merged layer.
Stewart Says:
this is my finished product, don’t look exactly the same but similar effect
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=29xbtzq&s=5
Mike Says:
hey, nice tut. im a bit confused on the drag drop for the glass effect txt, i just layerd and erased the extra. Other than that it was great, im learning so much between this and many other tuts im looking at. im looking into pro graphics as a career and i have seen some amazing stuff from z pro’s and yours ranks right up there w/ it
Kirk Says:
Hey, I’m new with Photoshop and your tutorials are really helping me out.
I’m having trouble with part of this one though.

“Drag the selection onto the Broken Glass Texture you’ve just downloaded, copy and paste a portion of the texture back to our document. This will create a new layer on top of the “Text” layer, name it as “Glass Texture”.”

I opened the Glass Texture file, so I had my “Untitled-1″ and “Glass Texture” files open in Photoshop.
I selected the Text and dragged it over to the Glass Texture, then what do I do?
Arrhythmia Says:
Thank you for all your tuts, James. I’m a beginner in Photoshop and you are really helping me.
henry Says:
nice tuts, is there a section to just these methods?
saleena Says:
I think you need to be more specific in your tutorials. When ever i follow your tutorials I always get lost. In this one I got stuck at step three.
STEVO91 Says:
Thx alot m8 my 1st proper 1 i done aswell :) easy 2 follow
STEVO91 Says:
and yeh saleena took me a while 2 figure out wot 2 do but still its awesome
Amanda S Says:
The quality of the info is what keeps me on this site, thanks!
Business Card Printing Says:
Absolutely amazing effect! I can’t wait to try it out. Looking forward to more great tuts from you. Thanks for sharing this!
huwaw69 Says:
i thought that the shattered glass effect is not an image, i thought it was an effect… but great effect though
Jayden Says:
The Broken glass texture link at step 3 doesn’t work for me. I’m getting a 404 error. “Error 404 – Page not found!

The page you requested does not exist. ”

please fix it, I’m looking forward to finishing this tut :)

thanks
hid4msk Says:
all links is dead :((
rahdigga19 Says:
Can someone post a link to the step 7 image the link to it is dead…please and thank you ^^
Puch Says:
you can find the textures by going to http://cgtextures.com and searching for glass, they are the 16th and 18th pictures. direct link doesn’t come up in address bar.

nice tutorial, came in handy for a uni project, thanks! :)
That Guy Says:
For those who are having trouble with Step 3 –
Copy the texture into your doc. and resize to a good size.
Then, place it over your text. Set the Texture’s Layer mode to Overlay, then while having the “Texture” Layer selected Ctrl. Click on your Text’s thumbnail to load the selection.

Proceed, to cut out a selection of the text with the overlaying texture and drag aside. Then, Erase the remaining texture and BOOM! Continue, with the tutorial.

Guest,
AKA That Guy