Concrete text tutorial

Submitted by Olieng on Friday, 10 April 20096 Comments

Here’s my tutorial demonstrating how you can take advantage of a background texture by placing text on top of it, add some layer styles and see the text gradually morph and pop out into that texture. I’ll be demonstrating this technique using a concrete texture which is supplied below.

Background Image.

Right click and save image, open it up into Photoshop.

Make sure your image resolution is on 75. Image > Image size > then find image resolution and change it. If you’re planning on doing this tutorial with a bigger image, change the resolution higher according to size.
First create the text you want on top of the concrete image, thick bold fonts will work best.

I’ve created the text with my initials OP; now make another copy of that layer and make it invisible like shown below. Then go back to the first text layer, which is the one you’ll be working on first.

Inner glow.

Double click on the layer to open up the layer style panel. We’re only going to add an inner glow for this layer.

Blend layer: Color burn
Opacity: Around 50 to 65% will do.
Size: Around 50%

You can tweak these around for your liking, or you can use my settings below.

Now you’re finished with that layer. Go now go to the text copy layer and make it visible. We’ll be adding 4 layer styles to this layer to make the effects appeared.

Drop Shadow

Bring up the layer panel on this layer and first add a drop shadow.
Black: 30%
Distance: 4px
Size: 10px

Bevel and Emboss

This layer style will give your text the texture popup effect.
Style: Inner Bevel
Technique: Chisel Hard
Dept: 1000%
Size: 8px
Angle: 122 degrees
Altitude: 64
I used a custom Gloss Contour which could be downloaded here: Gloss Contour
Vivid Light: Light grey 100%
Shadow Mode: Multiply black 26%

Outer Glow

The outer glow is what gives the dark shadow effect onto the concrete.
Blend mode: Color Burn
Opacity: 69%
Size: 60px
Range: 50%

Contour.

Add a contour with a range of 50%, any round contour will do, as it makes the highlights round and smoother.

Rasterize Type.

Now right click on the text copy layer and Rasterize Type.

Delete parts.

Now that our layer is rasterize were able to delete any part of the text which will give it the crack effect.

Now use the Polygonal Lasso Tool and trace any part of the cracks and press delete.

Finished Product.

6 Comments »

martin
1:34 am on April 17th, 2009
Hi nie tutorial but i do not understand the part with the inner glow because i do settings just like ..EXACTLY and it doeasnt happens…the whole thing is strange only from one GLOW to become this way…can you see it and help me?
Olieng
2:15 am on April 17th, 2009
The inner glow layer should have a blend mode of “color burn”. After you’ve done that, that’s all you need for that layer. Then you go to your other layer on top of that which you add the rest of the layer style provided.
photo retouching
4:41 am on April 28th, 2009
The result was well worth the read! Thanks for the tutorial!
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6:17 am on May 4th, 2009
Hi, interesting post. I have been pondering this topic,so thanks for posting. I will definitely be subscribing to your blog.
Tyler
9:38 am on July 29th, 2009
For the inner glow part, I have the exact same thing as you but my font is still white?
Curtis
11:31 am on December 4th, 2009
Make sure BOTH text layer’s blending modes are set to Color Burn. (Right click on each text layer and click ‘blending options’. The first Style option on the left says ‘Blending Options: Custom’. Click on that and change the blending mode to ‘Color Burn’)

Once this is done on both text layers, combined with the tutorial above, you will get the same effect.

Great technique!!