Simple Elegant Headers Text Effects

Three Simple Elegant Headers Text Effects

October 17, 2011 | 73 Comments » | Category: Simple

This tutorial will explain three different ways to create very simple yet elegant header-style text effects, using only two Layer Styles each time.

The Final Result:

Notes:

* the software used in this tutorial is Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended
* the size of the final result image is 1024 * 768
* you might want to check the Basix Page to see some useful topics on dealing with Photoshop basics, such as loading palettes and some shortcuts.

Resources:

* old paper texture by ~klimek.
* Brush Pack-Horizontal Dividers by ~MouritsaDA-Stock.

Effect 1: Drop Shadow and Gradient Overlay

- The example used is the current TEXTUTS header. The Background color is #f4f2ed, and the text color is #b95886 but you can use any colors you want.

Simple Elegant Header Text Effect step 1

- If you want to add more than one color to the text, you can use the Type Tool to select the characters you want to add a different color to, then click the color box in the Character panel (Window -> Character) to choose the color.

Here, the color used is #b4b362.

Simple Elegant Header Text Effect step 1

- To achieve the result in the header, I duplicated the text layer first then changed the colors, so that I had two layers, one with the first color and one with the second color, then, I rasterized both layers, and deleted the second half of the layer on the top.

Simple Elegant Header Text Effect step 1

- Double click the text layer to add the Drop Shadow Layer Style. Change the Blend Mode to Normal and the Opacity to 100%, we want to get the color as it is. Then, change the Distance to 2 and the Size to 0. The shadow should look more like a “Stroke” rather than an actual shadow, so it shouldn’t be so far from the text, and it shouldn’t be blurry as well.
Finally, the color should be a bit lighter than the Background color. In this case, it is White (because the Background is very light).

Simple Elegant Header Text Effect step 1

This should create a subtle elegant effect, giving the text some depth.

Simple Elegant Header Text Effect step 1

- You can also go ahead and add a Gradient Overlay, changing the Blend Mode to Soft Light, and the Opacity to something around 20%.

Simple Elegant Header Text Effect step 1

- And that’s pretty much it, super easy yet a really cool effect.

Simple Elegant Header Text Effect step 1

Effect 2: Drop Shadow and Stroke

- The example used is the previous TEXTUTS header (which I’ve got a couple of requests to do a tutorial for ). The Background color is #f4f2ed as well, and the text colors are #b95886 and #c8c1b0.

Simple Elegant Header Text Effect step 2

Double click the text layer to apply the Layer Styles:

- Drop Shadow: Change the color to #bfb8ae (a couple of shades darker than the Background color), the Distance to 2 and the Size to 2 as well.

Simple Elegant Header Text Effect step 2

- Stroke: Change the color to #ffffff (a couple of shades lighter than the Background color), and the Size to 1.

Simple Elegant Header Text Effect step 2

- This effect adds a subtle 3D look to the text.

Simple Elegant Header Text Effect step 2

Effect 3: Drop Shadow and Inner Shadow

- For the last effect, we are going to create a very simple vintage looking poster. So set the Foreground color to #b0b19b and the Background color to #8f9078, then create a Radial Gradient from the center of the document to one of the corners.