If you have got an important project or tons of spare time on your hands. You can create and modify each letter. First you must rasterize the layer, select it, right click and make work path, then use your path editing tools (taught in the full Photoshop video tutorials training) to edit the anchor points. Then you can make selection in the paths palette and refill it on a new layer with your gradient. (Sorry I don't have time to show this entire process; maybe in the future.)
Now double click on the gradient editor to create
another custom gradient. Use these approximate colors. This will be a
darker Tatooine sand color. I find your lack of faith disturbing...
Yes I'm a huge Rats Wars fan myself..
Choose these approximate color stops and name this new
gradient. Press New to store the new gradient (it will override the
other gradient you started from because they are both saved).
Here you can see your new gradients. If you see an image with a great
color scheme/gradient that you'd like to scan in you can easily recreate
the gradient with the eyedropper. I've done this several times.
Otherwise you'll have to guess.
Create a very large 'II'. This layer will be placed above the background and below the other text in the layers palette. You'll want to center it. Note the text settings that I'm using..Adobe Garamond...
You can add a slight drop shadow to this layer by right clicking and
choosing blending options and enter drop shadow editing box. You could
also add a light sandy yellow outer glow. I've never seen such devotion
in a blending mode before...
Here's where the action is: Go to one of your text layers (don't need to
be rasterized) and bring up the layer styles. If you want to recreate
the exact effect, just use the same settings that I'm using in all of
these visual screenshots. Ain't this great...my own VPS with 12 GB so I
can just throw in all kinds of low-res huge screenshots for you to learn
from (unlike some other sites where you have to try to picture...).
Basically you're going to be doing several different
layer styles and trying out different variations using the custom
gradients that you have created. Grab this .psd file (and hundreds
of others) from iPSDirectory when you get my
Photoshop Designer Package.
