EZ Plastic Text

Step 1

Open a new document in photoshop of any size. For this tutorial I will be working with a 500x300 document size.

Step 2

Set your foreground color to a light pantone color, here I've used: #2673FF

Go ahead and pick out a font that has a bit of thickness to it. Here I'm using a font called Dodger that is available freely for download by clicking here you can also find this font in the download pack for this tutorial.

Set you font up like so:

Note: Make sure "Sharp" is chosen to help smooth out the font's edges

And type out your text near the center of the canvas:

Step 3

Double click this layer, and apply the following blending options:

Drop Shadow:

Outer Glow:

Bevel and Emboss:

Satin:

Stroke:

Result:

Step 4

Press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + N on your keyboard to create a new layer. Name this new layer "Shine 1":

Hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard, and click the Text Layer in the layers pallet, doing so will make a selection of everything inside of that layer; in this case, our text:

Go to Select->Modify->Contract with a setting of 1 pixel:

Get out the Rectangular Marquee Tool ( ) and deselect the bottom portion of our text selection. This is done by holding down the Alt key on the keyboard while making a selection as you normally do.

Make 2 Deselections, so that the bottom portion of the text has been deselected off of both rows of text (if you used 2 rows of text as I did):

Using the Flood Fill Paint Bucket ( ) fill the selection with white (#FFFFFF). Make sure that the layer named "Shine 1" is the one that is selected.

Press Ctrl + D on your keyboard to deselect the selection.

Result:

Step 5

Change the Blending Mode of this layer to "Soft Light":

Result:

Step 6

Press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + N on your keyboard to create a new layer. Name this new layer "Shine 2".

Just as we did in Step #4, hold down the Ctrl button on your keyboard, and click on the original Text Layer to make a selection of it's contents:

Go to Select->Modify->Contract, this time with a setting of 2 pixels:

Get out the Rectangular Marquee Tool ( ) and deselect roughly 2/3rds of the selection for each row of text you have created. This is done by holding down the Alt key on the keyboard while making a selection as you normally do.

Click to enlarge

Using the Flood Fill Paint Bucket Tool ( ) fill this selection with white (#FFFFFF).

Press Ctrl + D on your keyboard to deselect the selection.

Result:

Step 7

Go to Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur and apply the following settings:

Step 8

Drop the opacity of the "Shine 2" layer to 80%:

Result:

And that completes the effect, here's how my final version came out after I added a render background to the text:

Click to enlarge

I hope you've enjoyed this tutorial.

Download EZ Plastic Text Source Package here.