Translucent Text Effect with Sky and Cloud

In this tutorial, I will show the processes involved in making this shining and refreshing transparent text effect with sky and cloud textures.  We had some really interesting clouds on the sky yesterday and that’s where I’ve got the inspiration from :)

The techniques included in this tutorial are layer styles, gradient fills, clone stamp tools, blur filters and various image adjustment and transformation tools. It’s a simple tutorial so have a go!

Here is a preview of the final result:

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document sized 800px * 800px. On the background layer, use the Gradient Fill tool to create some irregular lighting as shown below:

Step 2

On the background layer, type some texts onto it (Make sure you choose a bold font as we need to make room for transparency, I used this font from fontspace.com).

Position the text as shown below:

Step 3

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

Drop Shadow

Inner Shadow

Inner Glow

Bevel and Emboss

Contour

Gradient Overlay

Stroke

The effect so far will look like this:

Step 4

Now we’re onto apply some nice cloudy texture onto the text. Download a copy of this image (The one on the left) from CG Texture and select a nice portion of it as shown below:

Copy and paste the selected portion onto our text and name this layer as “cloud”.

Use the Eraser Tool (with a big, soft and round brush, set opacity and flow to 60%) to gently erase the outside of the cloud:

Step 5

Still on the “Cloud” layer, use the Clone Stamp Tool (again with a big, soft and round brush setting) and clone the cloud so it covers all of our texts:

Then hit Ctrl + M and apply the following Curve settings:

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

Step 6

Duplicate the “Cloud” layer once, then apply the following Black and White adjustments:

This create some colour depth for the image and you will have the following effect:

Optionally, you can duplicate the “Cloud” layer again and this will add some more colour to the image:

Step 7

Rasterize the text layer and do a multi-select for all the layers created, distort the image until you reach the effect shown below:

Then we can add some light over the text. To do this, create a new layer called “light” and select a rectangle portion just above the text, fill the selection with White colour and render some fiber:

Then de-select the selection, apply the following motion blur settings:

Then hit Ctrl + L and apply the following Levels adjustment settings:

To make the light a bit soft, apply the following gaussian blur settings:

After that, use the Eraser Tool to get rid of the unnecessary bits of the light, and free-transform (or distort, rotate, perspective) it until reaching desired effect:

Ok that’s it for this tutorial, the rest is left your own creativity. You can duplicate the cloud layer a few times, or add some extra lighting to the text. Totally up to you.

Here is my final image for this tutorial:

Hope you enjoy it and find it useful and inspirational! If you have any question, just drop me a comment.

Have a nice day!