Fun text effect.
Written by Hallonnie

This Tutorial will explain how we get this fun text effect.  You will need these brushes if you want to follow it exactly.  (Text tutorial brushes.)

 
Let’s begin! 

Open a new document.  Grab a nice thick font.  For this sample I’ve used Cooper.  Type your text at roughly 60 pt, no matter the color, and select smooth.  Like this;
 

In your layers pallet, change your text blending mode to OVERLAY.  I know…it disappeared.  No problem…

Create two new layers in your layer pallet.  Grab your text layer and drag it to the top.
Now, grab brush one from the set I’ve supplied.  (you can use any brush you want) Set your brush setting to this;

 

 Choose any color…something dark, or bright works great. Start dabbing with your brush.

Repeat on second layer, this time change the color, and grab a different brush.
You should have something like this;

 

Select layer from the top menu.  Select layer style, click blending mode and apply these settings.

Blending mode;
 

Drop Shadow;
 
Bevel and Emboss;
 
Contour;
 
Save Style;
 
((Here’s a side note about this style.  It is best to use a drop shadow color similar to your primary color used in the text.  If you are using a lot of red in your text, then a dark red drop shadow gives it added pizzazz.))

Now, take your magic wand tool and on your text layer, click the outside of your text.  Be sure to also select the inside of any closed letters.  Like this;

 

Keeping the selection active, click on your fist colored layer in the layers pallet.  Hit the Delete key.  Now, select the second colored layer from the layers pallet, and hit delete.

Now you should have only the white background, and your text showing.  And your text still selected.

Now.  This is important.  Click on your background  from the layers pallet.  Go to Select> INVERSE.  Now only the text is selected.  Take your lasso tool, hover over selected text, right click, and select “layer via copy”.  Now you should have a white text layer above the background layer.

Grab the background layer, drag it to the little trash can at the bottom of the layers pallet.

Now you have a transparent background.  Now it’s time to save for the web.

Go to File>save for the web.  Make sure that you save as a Gif file.  Also, you’ll need to matte the image.  For this board I’m using white for it’s matting.

 

Here are a few example using other brushes, and a different font. You can also play with the text layers blending modes to add a little different feel to the image. Play around, and have fun!






And here are a couple shapes I did using the same process.