Colourful Retro Text Effect Tutorial

02/02/2023 0 By Carol

A colourful retro text effect tutorial. Easy to complete for beginners.

Colourful Retro Text Effect Tutorial

This colourful retro text effect tutorial results in a 3D-style text with gradient text and shadow. Very easy to complete, and a few tips and tricks to learn along the way for Photoshop beginners. If you have any problem completing this tutorial, please leave a comment at the end of the post and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

Resources:

Lobster font from DaFont

Background texture from Pixabay

Step 1

Open a new document. For the purposes of this tutorial I used 816px x 540px.

Step 2

Open the Background Texture image.

Image>Image Size – set the width to 816px, auto height.

Drag the texture into your document and make sure it is centred horizontally and vertically.

Create a Black & White adjustment layer and change the Preset to Maximum White.

Reduce the opacity of the adjustment layer to 80%.

Step 3

Set the foreground colour to blue #77CEC6 and select the Type Tool (the type colour should automatically be the same as the foreground colour).

Set the size to 250pt and using the Lobster font, type your text.

Step 4

Duplicate the text layer.

Make the original text layer active and put it into a group: Ctrl+G.

Ctrl+T to transform the object. Using the arrow keys on the keyboard, move the text one pixel down and one pixel to the right. Hit the enter key on the keyboard to accept the transformation.

Hold down Ctrl+Shift+Alt and hit the T key 19 times. Your final layer should be copy 20.

Make the group active and click the right mouse button. Click Merge Group.

Step 5

Turn off the visibilty of the top layer, then apply the following Gradient Overlay settings to the merged layer:

Here is how your shadow should be looking:

Step 6

Restore visibility of the top layer and make it active. Apply the following Bevel & Emboss, Contour, Stroke, Inner Glow and Gradient Overlay settings:

Here is the finished result if you don’t wish to complete the optional steps below:

Step 6 (Optional)

Merge the text layer and the merged group layer together.

Create a Solid Fill Adjustment layer (click on the half grey, half black circle at the bottom of the layers palette and select Solid Color).

Fill the layer with black #000000 and clip it to the text layer (hold down the Alt key and move the cursor to between the 2 layers. When you see a right-angled arrow with a square beside it, click the mouse).

Set the layer’s Blend Mode to Soft Light and reduce the opacity to 35%.

This is the final result: