Design Layered Rock Text Effect with Natural Elements in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create this layered text effect with natural textures in Photoshop. This effect might look a little bit complex but it really is quite simple to create. Have a try!

We will practice basic selection techniques with quick selection tool, manipulate the selection with free transform tool, and we will be using a few brush tools to touch up our image.

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

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To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stocks:

Rock

Tree

Bird

Step 1

Create a new document sized 800px * 1198px with white background. Use the Gradient Fill Tool (set to Radial Gradient) to fill the background layer as shown below:

Use any font you like, type a big letter in the centre of the canvas. We will use this as a guide for our rock textures which will be added in the next step.

Step 2

We will be adding rock textures for our text in this step. Load the rock image into Photoshop and use the quick selection tool to select the following portion:

Copy and paste the selection to our document and cover the text as shown below: (use the free transform tool to adjust its size)

Grab the eraser tool and choose the chalk brush as shown below as the eraser’st tip shape:

Work through the edge of the rock texture and remove the following portion:

Repeat the above process and add more rock texture over onto our text:

We can add some smaller rocks to create a particle effect:

Hide the original text layer and leave only the rock textures, and here is the effect so far:

Step 3

We will add some tree leaves texture onto our text in this step. Load the tree image into Photoshop and select a portion of its leaves:

Copy and paste the selection over to our document, place the layer behind the rock layer:

Add a few more leaves texture to the left as shown below:

And we can add some more leaves texture OVER the rocks as shown below:

Step 4

We will add few more natural elements into our design. We can select the whole tree as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection over to our document, re-size and place it to the following location: (rotate the tree slightly to the right)

Load the bird image into Photoshop and select the bird:

Copy and paste the selection over to our document, re-size and place it at the following position:

Step 5

We’re almost done! For final touch-ups, we can add some cloud and abstract brush patterns to our image, you should be able to find lots of those brushes over the internet:

We can flatten the image, and use the Burn tool to darken some parts of the text, to add more depth:

and here is my final effect: (click to enlarge)

That’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy going through it and find it useful. Drop me a comment below if you have any question.

Till next time, have a great day!