Simple 3D text in Photoshop

So I figured it's about time I add some sort of tutorial to this. For those of you who don't know who this is, it's Andrzej. I apologize for the nickname used, but I've had this account active for a while, and thought it's easier to keep it than make a new one just for this.

Anyway, I have a tutorial that'll give you a simple 3D text effect in Photoshop, and with techniques that'll save you time so that you don't have to do certain things manually. 'Cause if it's one thing everyone hates, it's doing things manually.

(Note: You can click on any of the pictures to get a bigger example.)

1. The first thing you do is to create a new image in Photoshop. It doesn't matter if the background is white or transparent or whatever. But for ease of looking, I've gone with white.



2. Write in your text. I decided to use the sample text of '3D text' but with an exclamation mark, because of my affinity for the various faux-3D sketches from SCTV. I've bolded it because thicker fonts work best, and I stuck with Times New Roman for its simplicity. You can experiment with other fonts, and see what works. But I'm warning you now, some fonts will look like absolute crap.

I've also moved the text off-centre: to the bottom-left, so I can add the 3D part to the bottom-left, but you can do it in any perspective.

3. Select the Move tool and the text layer



Now, in the words of Mona (Homer's mom) Simpson: here comes the tricky part. If you don't do the next steps right, you'll screw it up and have to start all over again. And you don't want that to happen, now, do you? If you don't feel like paying attention, you can skip what I'm about to say and just duplicate every layer by hand, but again, I assume you don't want to do this manually.

You have to go in the opposite direction in which you want your shadow to go. If I want it to go to the bottom-left, I have to make sure that the new layers go to the top-right.

4. Press alt+up and then hit right. Repeat this about 5 or 6 times, until you get the desired thickness of the text. The alt+up part creates a new layer from the layer you have selected, but nudged one pixel up, and hitting it right has nudged the new layer to the right, so you have the diagonal effect. Since the new layer is selected, pressing alt+up again duplicates the duplicate, so you don't have to duplicate the initial layer and double-move it.

Now, I've created five duplicate layers (not including the original duplicate). Unfortunately for me, this looks like a bit of a mess, so I have to tweak it.

Since the newest layer on top is selected, I'll go with that, since that is now the front of the 3D text. You can select a different colour, or a different pre-set style. I went with a preset style, since I'm lazy and don't want to do anything from scratch, yet still get a nicer look than just a simple colour.

I went with this one







It gives us a bit of a drop shadow, but that's fine for this. Just make sure it's not one that alters the size of the layer on top, so that the 3D part is somehow smaller than the rest.

And that's it! You have your own new 3D text image, that's ready to be dragged into a new Photoshop project that you're working on. Just remember to merge all the layers (minus the background), so that you don't end up bringing over just one flat layer.

And you can experiment by customizing the look of the text on top, and by even applying the style of text to the beginning, before you duplicate the layer