Gilae Signature Text Effect - Tutorial

It's a trick I figured out when I was working on one of Anulien's sigs and now I'm a tad addicted to it.

The first trick is finding the right font. For the purposes of this type of layer effect, it's best to choose a font that has a thickness to it and something with a bit of a dramatic flair. I tend to think of a sig as a person's 'theme song' (thus all the music quotes in my sigs) and I try and match up the font with the music in my head (heh need a whole seperate tutorial on the music on my head haha).

ANYWAY...

Once you've chosen your font and a colour that is appropriate to the rest of the signature (in this case I used the same bright orange from Tyraen's armour) then it's time for fun with LAYER EFFECTS!



1. I ALWAYS use a shadow layer...sometimes you can't even see it's there but I always put one. Call it force of habit.

2. You want to start with "Bevel and Emboss". I've used a Pillow Emboss...which when you set it will look like it's sunk into your image. Next, set your gloss contour...there are a ton of options but only two of them do I ever really use to make text "shiny". They are labeled "Ring" and "Ring-Double". You can adjust the contours of the emboss as well, but in the case of Tyraen's sig I just used "Ring". As can be seen in the above screenshot, I adjusted the depth and size of the emboss to give it a more dramatic effect. These may need to be adjusted every time you change the size of the font.

3. Add a "Satin" effect. The contour setting is changed to "Ring-Double" and adjusted to a distance and size that I like. The opacity can also be adjusted. I chose a dark red colour for the satin as well.

4. I didn't like the straight orange colour, so I added a gradient overlay and set it to darken to give the text a little more richness. I chose one of the standard reds gradients from the Photoshop CS library...but you can make your own as well.

5. The final and most important is the stroke setting. The white line set around the text makes it appear as if the edges are shinier and gives a silky effect. This particular stroke is set to 6...but I set them as high as 10 and as low as 3, depending on the size of the font. A black stroke gives a darker, more forboding effect but it won't look as shiny.

6. For extra gloss, I added an inner glow. This particular sig looked dark to me and I really wanted the text to pop.

The smaller font was done slightly differently in this case. The text was set in a teal colour and the red gradient was set to disolve, creating the spotted illusion.

That's it in a nutshell...I hope it makes sense!