Plastic Text

To create a plastic effect on text, you must first create a new, large image (I used 600X300) and fill with your preferred background colour.  

Now, using up as much space as possible on the page, select the text tool and type in your text, using whichever colour you would like. In the layers window, right click on your text layer, and hit "rasterize layer". My layers window looks like this:


A scaled down version of my picture:


Now, holding down Ctrl, click on your text in the layers window. (This will select it's transparency). With your text still highlighted, go to select>>modify>>contract, and contract the selection by about 5-15 pixels, depending on the size of your picture. A zoomed in version of what your highlighted selection should look like:


Now, with the selection still highlighted, go to the new layer button  and select white as the foreground colour. Press Alt+Backspace to fill, or select the paint bucket tool and fill it that way. Gaussian blur the new layer by about 5-15 pixels. Set the layer's blending mode to colour dodge. 

Hold down ctrl, and click on your original text layer in the layers window. With that highlighted, go to the channels window, and press the save selection as channel button . Click on the channel it created. Now, go to filter>>blur>>gaussian blur and blur the selection by 5 pixels. It should look somewhat like this:


Invert the selection by pressing crtl+shift+i, and the press the delete button on your keyboard. Go back to the layers window, and select your original text again by clicking on it while pressing ctrl. Create a new layer, and fill the selection with black. Rename the layer "glow". Your layers should look somewhat like this:


On the glow layer, click "preserve transparency" in the lock section on the layers window, and set the blending mode to screen. Now go to filter>>render>>lighting effects, and set the properties at:
Gloss: 80
Material: -40
Exposure: 55
Ambience: -100
Now change the texture channel to Alpha 1, and it's height to 100. Create a directional light with an intensity of 32, and make sure the image's edges are visible. Now click OK and you're done! You can play with contrast, and the images curves, until you are happy with it. Here is the final image (scaled down):