Comments on: Chrome Text Photoshop Tutorial

By: sji

sji — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:10:53 +0000

I had the same problem ‘Rex’ had. Flat letter with no bevel. Don’t know if you’ve already solved the problem but I found that when I went to the lighting effect, I had to choose ‘M copy Transparency’ as the texture channel instead of Alpha 1. Of course, ‘M copy’ was the name of my layer. Hope this helps. Once I found this out (after many attempts) I really liked this tutorial. Thanks for posting

By: Moe

Moe — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 02:45:53 +0000

I mean holding down the control button on your keyboard (on a PC I think it’s command on a Mac) and while holding it down clicking the layer in your layers palette. Depending on the version of PS you are using you may have to click the Layers thumbnail in the layer palette.

By: joe

joe — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 02:29:54 +0000

could you clarify what you mean by control click to bring up its selection at the beginning, because i tried control clicking and saying select pixels but that didn’t end up working

By: Moe

Moe — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 07:26:49 +0000

Just put the image somewhere on the net, there are tons of free image hosting places out there like imageshack, and then put a link to it here.

By: Rex

Rex — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 03:43:09 +0000

Hi Moe,
what’s the best way to post images back on your blog? i can show you what I have done so far just playing around with ‘Effects’ and the results from my attempt here.

By: Moe

Moe — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:35:49 +0000

After blurring the text in the channels palette it should look something like this. This effect may not work with all fonts, try doing it with a font similar to the one I used in this tutorial, I believe it's "Arabic" Yes, you will have much better luck doing this one letter at a time.

By: Rex

Rex — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:32:50 +0000

what’s the best way to post the output? I have seen some slight change to the text in the middle letter providing some slight amount of texture. perhaps i’ll try with one letter and see whether it provides and better result.

By: Rex

Rex — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:21:55 +0000

thanks Kris for the input. I am clearly a Photoshop luddite, still not doing the trick. started with blur on 64 and 128 and worked my way down.. also with black background and transparent. the text [in Broadway TL] does not seem to visibly alter throughout the blurring process, and then when i include the lighting effects, it simply turns the text from ‘flat’ white to black.

I am leaving something out that is obvious, except I am not sure what it is. are there any specific colour settings at the start that I should be aware of?

I appreciate the collective coaching. I feel there is an ‘ah-hah’ moment imminent……

By: Moe

Moe — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:20:35 +0000

The image will visibly change after both steps. After you apply the Gaussian blur the image will be blurred (duh) but you will only see this change on the channels palette, not in the layers palette and it will change when you apply the lighting giving it the 3D look.

Can you post the image that you are ending up with?

I believe you can change the background color with no issues, but I wouldn’t swear to it. You can always delete the black behind the letter when you are done with the tutorial.

By: Kris

Kris — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 23:52:06 +0000

Hi Rex,

Are you working on large text? If so you need to give the custom channel more gaussian blur! Try starting at 64px and keep repeating the gaussian blur with half as many px each time till you get to 1px!

Then make sure this new custom channel, with the gaussian blur, is used when you are doing the lighting effects part! And yes, you should see a visible difference when you switch to the custom channel from default! If this isn’t the case it is probably the custom channel that is at fault. For me, it was the amount of gaussian blur that I was doing wrong at first try giving it more pixels!

The background isn’t important in chroming, you can easily make it a transparent background.