Design a Soft and Fluffy Text Effect in Photoshop

Posted on February 15th, 2009 in Text Effects.

Tags: beginner, effect, filter, layer, text

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In this tutorial, I will show you the processes I used to design a soft and fluffy text effect in Photoshop without using any third party images.

Along the way, we will be using techniques such as gradient fill, various layer blending options, dynamic brush settings and filter effect. I combine this soft text effect with a solid stone wall texture at the end of this tutorial, thought it would be interesting to see! It’s a simple tutorial, have a go!

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

Black and White version:

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document in Photoshop, size doesn’t really matter in the tutorial (I chose 1200 x 800 px). Fill the background layer with Black colour.

Now let’s create some background lighting. To do this, simply grab the Gradient Tool (G) and choose the Radial Gradient option, Fill the background layer as shown below:

Step 2

On the background layer, type some texts on it. You may choose any font you like, I used this font for this tutorial.

For this tutorial, I seperate each letter into different layers so I will have more freedom playing with each of them:

I place the letters as shown below (you can of course alter the position of text yourselves):

Rasterise the text and merge the layers together when you’re happy with the text position. Name the merged layer as “Text”.

Step 3

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

Drop Shadow

Bevel and Emboss

Contour

Gradient Overlay

Stroke

And you will have this effect so far:

Step 4

Load the selection of the text layer by holding down Ctrl key and left-click the thumbnail image of the “text” layer on the layer palette:

Then press M key to select the Rectangular Marquee Tool, right-click on the selection and choose “Make work path”:

Set tolerance to 1.0 pixel:

And you will see now the selection become a work path:

Step 5

Create a new layer called “fluffy effect”. Now let’s make a dynamic brush to create some fluffy effect!

Grab the following brush and set its size to 70px:

Then apply the following brush dynamics to it:

Shape Dynamics

Scattering

Other Dynamics

Don’t forget to tick “Smoothing” option as well.

Now Press “P” key to select the Pen Tool, right-click on the work path and choose “Stroke Path” then choose the “Brush” option. You will have the following effect:

Press “ESC” key to cancel the path.

Step 6

To add a bit more texture effect onto text, you can duplicate “fluffy effect” layer once, and go to Filter > Sketch > Reticulation and apply the following settings:

Add the following Bevel and Emboss setting to the duplicated layer:

Change the layer blending option of the duplicated layer to “Overlay”, and the effect will look like this:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! Of course you can futher enhance this text effect by applying some more texture effect, or simply add some background effect to it.

Here is my final image for this tutorial (I combine it with an abstract image I created a while ago with rocky texture on it, just interested to see what would the end result be like)

You can click the image to enlarge.

Black and White version:

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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