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Photoshop Tutorials -- EZ Chrome Text

EZ Chrome Text with Photoshop

This tutorial will show you how to render chrome text. I used Photoshop 3.04 for Windows. Some things may be done differently with other versions.

Start off by opening a new file. I opened one at 286x190. Fill it with a color. To set the color, left-click on the foreground color square on the color swatch. The color I set was a light blue (R: 0, G: 141, B:197). To fill the graphic with the color you selected use ALT-BACKSPACE (see figure 3.1).

figure 3.1

Select the "Channels" palette by clicking on the Channels tab in the layers palette and create a new channel. This is done by left-clicking on the rectangle icon with the turned up corner. Leave the defaults (ex. the #4 name) set and click "OK". Set the foreground color to white. This can be done quickly by left-clicking on the default colors in the foreground/ background color swatch. It's a small black square over a small white square. Another click on the bent-two-headed arrow will swap the colors so that the foreground is set to white and the background is set to black.

Choose the text tool and enter some text. I entered my initials, TMC, using the Tiffany Hv BT font at 110 pixels and with anti-aliasing checked. Use CTRL-X and CTRL-V to center the text as in figure 3.2.

figure 3.2

DON'T de-select the text.

Change the foreground color to a medium gray. This can be done by left-clicking on the foreground square in the foreground/background color swatch. When the "color picker" dialog box appears click somewhere on the middle of the left side of the large color swatch. The gray I used turned out to be R: 102, G:102, B:102.

Choose Edit, Stroke and use 3 pixels and inside for the settings. This will leave a gray outline around the letters (see figure 3.3).

figure 3.3

Now you can de-select the text. Go back to the layers by selecting the layers tab in the layers palette and create a new layer. This is done by left-clicking on the rectangle with the turned up corner. You can leave the defaults set, once again.

Set the foreground color back to white and, with the new layer selected, use the text tool to re-enter the same text. Center the text using CTRL-X CTRL-V.

Choose Filters, Render, Lighting Effects... and use the following settings.

Style: 2amspot
Light type: spotlight
Intensity: 17
Focus: 34
Gloss: 0
Material: 34
Exposure: 0
Ambience: 4
Texture channel: #4
White is high: checked
Height: 100

I set the light to come from the left and above. I also moved the sides of the circle so that all of the text was lit.

You should end up with something similar to figure 3.4.

figure 3.4

That's it.... Be sure to check out some of our other Photoshop tutorials.

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