70s Retro Text Photoshop Tutorial

The 70s were full of colour and vibrancy, which I have tried to capture in this retro text tutorial.

Resources:

Floral Background from Pixabay
Hip Pocket Font from Dafont
Retro Pattern –

Step 1

For the purposes of this tutorial, I used a file size of 816px x 460px.

Using black as the foreground colour, Hip Pocket Condensed font at 150pt, create the text you require, each line on a separate layer.

Step 2

Rasterize each text layer – right click on the layer and select ‘Rasterize Type’.

I will now talk about the words I am using – so select the ‘hippie’ layer, Ctrl+T to transform the text. Right click anywhere in the Transform box and select ‘Warp’.

At the top of the screen, drop down the box and select ‘Flag’. Hit return to exit Transform mode.

Now select the ’70s’ layer, Ctrl+T, right click in the Transform box and select ‘Warp’, now select ‘Bulge’ from the drop down list at the top of the screen.

Along the top you can adjust the Bend percentage – change this to 35%.

Right click in the Transform box and select ‘Free Transform’. Hold down the Shift key to preserve the proportions and reduce the size to fit into the first curve of ‘hippie’

Finally, the ‘chick’ layer – apply ‘Flag’ warp and hit return. Place the word into the curves of ‘hippie’.

Step 3

Once you are happy with the placement of your text, you need to merge the layers. Click on the top text layer, hold the Shift key and click on the bottom text layer – this should select them all. Right click on any highlighted layer and select ‘Merge Layers’.

Open the retro pattern and place it over the text.

Resize the pattern to fit the text.

Right click on the layer in the layers palette and select ‘Create Clipping Mask’. Now you can move the pattern around to a position you like the look of.

Now select the text layer and the pattern layer – Make one of them active, hold the Shift key and click on the other to highlight them both. Right click on either of them and select ‘Merge Layers’.

Step 4

Duplicate the text layer – rename the original layer (second layer down in the layers palette) ‘shadow’ , click on the fx button at the bottom of the layers palette and select ‘Color Overlay’. Set the colour to yellow #EBDE08 and click OK.

Ctrl+T – using the arrow keys on the keyboard, move the layer up one pixel and to the right one pixel. Hit the enter button to accept the transformation.

Ctrl + Shift + Alt + T to transform again with duplicate. Do this 30 times so you have a nice deep shadown.

Step 5

Merge all the shadow layers together.

Step 6

Go back to the text layer with the pattern overlay. Click on the fx button at the bottom of the layers palette and select ‘Stroke’. Apply the following settings:

Step 7

Make the ‘Background’ layer active.

Open the Floral Background image. Drag it onto your canvas, Ctrl+T to resize it to fit.

Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur – apply the following settings:

Reduce the opacity of the floral background to around 85%.

Step 8

Make the ‘shadow’ layer active and apply the following Stroke settings:

Step 9

Merge the text and shadow layers together.

Hold down the Ctrl key and click on the thumbnail in the layers palette to select the pixels.

Select>Modify>Expand – set to 10px and click OK.

Create a new layer above the floral background layer, set the foreground colour to blue #090A56. Select the Paint Bucket tool and fill the selection.

And you’re done!