Text effects are what make your headlines stand out. Whether you are designing a magazine cover, an inside spread, a poster, or a headline for a website, text effects get great attention. Today I’ll show you how to create interesting glossy text in Photoshop shown below.
Glossy Text in Photoshop
First, create a new document. My document is 600px x 450px. You can make yours whatever you wish. Fill the background with a muted blue (#545f6d).
Next, we need to design on a good typeface. I like League Gothic, because it is bold and strong and has a dominant presence. Choose your typeface and type your message of headline. I chose #8a8a8a which is a medium grey as the typeface’s main color.
Now we need to add Layer Styles to really make our glossy text in Photoshop shine. Double-click the text layer in Photoshop and choose Bevel and Emboss. This is where most of the shape of the glossiness comes from for our effect, so we need to pay extra attention to this section.
Set the bevel to an Inner Bevel and set the technique to smooth. Set the direction to up, because we want the text to appear to be raised. You want to set the size to somewhere between 80px and 85px, or bigger, depending on the size of your text and your document. Set soften to 0px, because we want the bevel effect to be harsh. That is what will give us the glossy effect that we are looking for. leave the shading at the default angle of 120° and set the Altitude to 30°.
The Gloss Contour is where we will create the unique shape of our gloss effect. Instead of using a preset, click on the picture of the contour, and you can edit the points on your own. Click and drag each point until it looks similar to the example shown above. Lower the highlight opacity to 60%, but leave the shadows at 100%. Your glossy text effect in Photoshop should be similar to the one shown below:
Next, choose Stroke, set the size to 3px and set the position to outside. Set the opacity to 50% (otherwise the stroke will be too harsh. Then, set the Fill Type to Gradient, and create a gradient similar to the one below. To add points to the gradient, click just below the gradient itself. You can double-click each point to bring up the color picker, so you can easily choose each color. Set the angle to 90°.
Then, choose Inner Shadow. This will help add some definition between the stroke and the actual text. Set the opacity to 40%, the distance to 4px, and the size to 10-15px. Make sure the color is black.
Next, we will add an Inner Glow. This will make the middle of our text stand out more. Our main text will be red, so the highlight color should be a lighter tint of that. A rosey pink should work just fine. Set the Blend mode to Luminosity. Set the choke to 2% and the size to 15px.
Adding a Satin layer style will add to the glossy effect. Set the opacity to around 40% and the color to white. Set the angle to 45° and the distance to 5px. This adds a nice inner sheen to our glossy text in Photoshop.
Next, we will add a splash of color to our text. Select gradient Overlay and choose a red to white gradient. Choose reflected as the style, set the angle to 90° and increase the scale all the way to 150%.
The last thing we need to do is add shadows to the text. The next part throws a lot of people off, because they think that because the setting is called Outer Glow, that it has to be a light color. You can actually use a dark color, and combine Outer Glow with Drop Shadow to have 2 shadows. Select Outer Glow and set the opacity around 40%. Set the spread way out there between 80% – 90%. Set the size to 5px.
Select Drop Shadow and choose Multiply as the blend mode. Set the color to a deep red (#aa0000). Set the Distance to 6px and the size somewhere between 15 -20px. Click okay, and you should have very slick looking glossy text in Photoshop.
Conclusion
With just a little work and some creative combination of layer styles, you can create some amazing effects in Photoshop. In little to no time at all, we created very glossy text in Photoshop. If you want your text to be a different color, just change the gradient overlay color and the drop shadow color. I have included the Psd file for you to download and try for yourself.
How did the effect turn out for you? Did you choose a different color for your Glossy Text in Photoshop Share your questions or concerns in the in comment section below.
