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Create Awesome Glossy 3D Typography

In this tutorial we will be making a custom typeface that we will construct in Illustrator. Once we have the vector text we will then use Photoshop to jazz it up and to do this we will be using some advanced airbrushing techniques. In addition we will be using textures and additional effects so what are you waiting for? Let’s get started!

You Will Need

For this tutorial you will need to download the source folder, which contains all starting sketches, relevant brushes and .psd files. Please download this before continuing. (Download here)

Step 1

First off, we are going to start up Illustrator and open the ‘Come_Back_Soon_Start’ file from the resources folder. You will notice that the original layer is locked, as we want to use a new layer to trace the shapes of the text. We will start with the first word and work our way over. With your Pen Tool (P) selected, begin to trace around the contours of the C and continue to trace the remainder of the word. Make sure that you have no fill and a solid black outline while doing this.

After you have traced the outline of the first word, do the same to trace the inner shapes or the ‘counters’ of the ‘O’ and ‘E’ in the word. Select both of these inner shapes and press Command/Ctrl+G to group them. Fill the inner shapes with solid white, and the outer shapes with solid black. Next, bring up the Pathfinder palette and with both the inner and outer shapes selected click on the ‘Minus Front’ icon which is the second from the left in the top row, as indicated in the image below:

Continue this process for the second word, following the outline of the shapes and tracing it with the Pen Tool before filling in the counters and knocking them out with the Pathfinder like we did with the first word.

Lastly, trace the word ‘Soon’ using the same techniques as with the other words. You may have to tweak some of the curves depending on your Pen Tool skills but try to use as few points as possible. It can be tricky when trying to get rounded curves but it’s okay if it’s not exact because we can always correct this in Photoshop. You should now have all three of your words traced and hopefully it will look something like this:

Step 2

Now that we have all of our words traced we are going to fill them with a blue color – I am using #4995D1.

From here, we can open up Photoshop and create a new document that is tabloid size. I prefer to work larger and reduce the size later if need be. Once you have done that, select the first word in Illustrator and copy it using Command/Ctrl+C and then jump back over to Photoshop and paste it into the document (Command/Ctrl+V). When Photoshop asks you how you want to paste the object, leave it as a Smart Object and press the Enter Key or click ‘OK’ to paste. Repeat this step for the remaining two words so that all three are imported into Photoshop.

You can now close out of Illustrator and save your Photoshop document. For the rest of the tutorial we will be working in Photoshop.

Step 3

Feel free to play around with the arrangement of the words a bit until you get a nice looking lockup. What we want to do next is change the background to a solid black, but we are going to do this without using the Paint Bucket Tool.

Double click on the ‘Background’ layer to unlock it, and then double click it again to bring up the Layer Style options. Check off the ‘Color Overlay’ option and select a solid black (#000000). I prefer to change the color of the background this way so that if we need to change it or modify it at any point we can simply come back to the Layer Styles and move a slider around rather than picking a color and using the Paint Bucket over and over until you find a color you like. It will certainly save you a bit of time.

Rename the background layer to ‘Background’ like it was before we unlocked it just to keep things in order. At this point you should have something that looks like the image below:

Step 4

Next, we are going to add a gradient using the Layer Styles. Double click on the first word and once the dialog box appears check off ‘Gradient Overlay’ as shown here:

For the settings we are going to use a linear gradient that fades from our original blue color to a deeper purple color. For the colors I am going to use #5407AC for the purple and #0082CB is our blue color. Once you have done that, click ‘OK’ to accept the changes and apply the settings.

Now that we have set the gradient on the first word we can right click on the layer and select ‘Copy Layer Style’ before holding the Shift Key to select both remaining words. Right click once again and this time choose ‘Paste Layer Style’ to apply the settings to the remaining two vector layers. You should now have something like the image below:

Step 5

Create a new layer at the top of your layers palette and with your Pen Tool selected, begin to create a path on the inside of the letter ‘C’ following the contours of the letter.

Once you have a closed path, right click somewhere along the path and choose ‘Make Selection’. This will activate the area that you have drawn with the Pen Tool.

Now that the selection is active, switch over to your Paint Bucket Tool and fill this area with a solid white color as shown below:

After filling the area with white, go to the Filter menu and apply a Gaussian Blur of about 12 pixels and apply the effect to the shape. This is the technique we will be using to add highlights to our letters. It’s okay if you need to modify the path a bit in order to get nice smooth edges, it takes a bit of practice so don’t get discouraged if you don’t get it right away.

Step 6

Continue this process, creating a new layer for each highlight shape and using the Pen Tool to follow the contours of the letters. Right click and choose ‘Make Selection’ to activate the area:

Fill the shape with solid white each time like we did in the previous step:

Once the shape is filled with white you can cut out selections or add to them before blurring them to create the highlight.

This process gets easier the more you do it, but using the Pen Tool in this process will help you get some practice if you aren’t already comfortable using it. After adding some more highlights at lower opacities you will begin to see the depth that we are trying to create. Later we will add some shadows to darken up certain areas to add additional contrast.

We want to try and keep things organized so once you are happy with the amount of highlights on the first word, select all of the highlight layers along with the first vector layer and throw them into a grouped folder by pressing Commad/Ctrl+G.

Step 7

Moving along, we can now begin to add highlights to our second word using the same techniques. Certain parts of the image can be a bit tricky, for example, where the letters overlap as in the uppercase ‘B’. We want to add depth here as well and we can use a similar technique to achieve this. Using your Pen Tool, create a new layer and make a selection around the area where the loop of the ‘B’ overlaps the lower part of the letter as shown below:

Once you have done that, right click and choose ‘Make Selection’ to activate the selection.

Now that the selection is active, select a soft round brush set to around 10-20% opacity. Sample the blue color and go a slight shade darker – I am using #3247AC for this part. Inside of the selection, begin to brush some of the darker color to add a slight shadow. You may have to sample some of the original color next to it as well in order to get a smooth blend. If you happen to go outside of the shape of the letter, hold the Command Key and select the word to activate the shape of the word and then inverse your selection and press the Delete Key.

Step 8

Continue to apply the same technique for the highlights that we have already done. Take your time with this step and experiment with what you think looks best. It really helps to make a few passes and have some of the highlights at lower opacities and others with higher opacities. The more detail and time you take the better the image will look.

After experimenting with some different shapes and light sources at various opacities I am pretty happy with the results below:

Now this is essentially the first pass of highlights and it makes sense to apply it to all of the words before moving onto the next part. From here we are going to apply some more subtle highlights around the edges of the letters.

Step 9

Next, create a new layer above all of the other layers and set the blending mode to Overlay. At this point we have grouped each of our words with the corresponding highlights into group folders. What we are going to do next is apply some airbrushing to each of the words with a soft round brush at a low opacity. For the size I am using 90 pixels and I have set the opacity to 20% to start out. Hold down the Command Key and select the original text layer to activate the selection and begin to brush around the edges of the letters with a solid white color selected. You don’t have to brush around every spot but select a few key areas where the highlights look good. In the image below you will see what I mean by brushing along the edges of the selection.

It’s good to vary the size of the brush depending on the part of the word you are brushing. For example, you will notice I have brushed inside of the counters of the letters ‘O’ and ‘A’ and ‘E’ by adding some highlights around the inside edges.

Step 10

Create another new layer on top of the layers palette. Hold down the Shift and Command Keys at the same time and select each of the original words so that you will have all three selected at the same time.

Once you have an active selection around each of the three words, select the Paint Bucket Tool and fill the new layer with a solid black as shown in the image below:

Next, while the selection is still active go to the Filter menu and then Noise > Add Noise.

Apply the settings below:

After applying the settings from the image, select ‘OK’ to apply the changes. Next, set the blending mode of the layer to Screen and reduce the layer opacity to about 60%.

Step 11

Next, we are going to add a bit of flare and shine to our letters so we will create a new layer on top of the layers palette and create a square selection using the Marquee Tool (M). Fill this square with a solid black color using the Paint Bucket Tool (G) and go to the Filter menu and choose Render > Lens Flare. Apply the settings shown in the image below:

Change the blending mode of this layer to Screen and apply a layer mask. Select a radial gradient with the default colors and click and drag outwards from the center of the lens flare to fade the edges out.

Control click on the layer mask to apply it once you are happy with the results. From here we are going to duplicate the lens flare by pressing Command+J. Place a few of the flares around the text and rotate them or flip them so that they don’t look exactly the same. The image below shows where I have chosen to place the lens flares:

Step 12

Now we are going to add a bit of texture to our background. I came across a really nice paint/grunge type of texture that you can download for free at this link.

Once you download the background open it up with Photoshop and bring it into your document. Press Command/Ctrl+Alt/Option+U and move the Saturation slider all the way to the left to desaturate the background. Next, reduce the opacity to 22%.

Next we will apply a layer mask and press ‘D’ to reset the default colors. Select the Gradient tool and make sure you have the Radial Gradient option selected. On your layer mask, click and drag outwards from the center of the image to fade out the edges of the background as shown in the image below:

Step 13

Since we now have a bit of a textured background we are going to add a bit of separation between this layer and the text layers. To do this we are going to return to the Layer Styles by double clicking on the first word and applying the Drop Shadow effect with the settings shown below:

Click ‘OK’ to apply the changes to the text layer. Right click on this layer and choose ‘Copy Layer Style’ and apply it to both other text layers by again right clicking and choosing ‘Paste Layer Style’. We have now applied the shadow effect to all three of our text layers to add more depth to our image.

Step 14

I want to add a bit more punch to the image and apply some finishing touches to our text. To do this we are going to make a few Radial Gradients that fade from solid white to transparent. Change the Blending Mode of the Radial Gradients to Overlay and place them around the lower parts of the text to bring out some of the brightness of the purple color.

Once you are happy with the placement of the gradients, hold the Command Key and select the word that you are applying the highlight to, and then select the highlight layer and click on the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers Palette – Doing this will ensure that the highlight is only visible within the shape of the word that you are working on.

Step 15

Now we are going to add a Levels Adjustment Layer to the whole image and move the middle slider to the right a bit to add a bit more contrast here by enhancing the darks and bringing out the highlights. It’s good to step back and take a look at the image overall and I think we are pretty close to finishing this one up but I still want to take one more step to further improve the image.

Step 16

Before moving on to the last step you should save your work. What we are going to do is a bit of Dodge and Burn so we want to save and then flatten our image. Save this version with a different name like ‘Version 2’ or ‘Flattened’. Make a duplicate of the flattened image and make a few passes with the Burn Tool (O) at a low opacity setting. I am using the Burn Tool set to Shadows at about 20% and just lightly going over some of the darker areas. Next, I will make a few passes with the Dodge Tool set to Highlights at about 10% to brighten up a few key areas. Feel free to experiment with this step but be careful not to overdo it. The key to good Dodging and Burning is to make it subtle. Below is a final preview of our image:

Also to finish I increased the opacity of my background texture layer to around 45% to make it more prominent:

Thank you guys for following along with me for this tutorial and I hope that you have picked up a few useful tips along the way!

VIP Download

Download the original .psd file for this tutorial here:

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