Imaginative Styles and Layering

Let's start with a new image, white background. Create a new layer, enter some large text with the type mask tool, and fill it with black. Leaving the selection active, duplicate this layer. Here's where we begin:

What am I going to do with this? Well, lets play with the layer styles a bit. If you have been keeping track of the past few articles, you would know that I created a series of layer styles a couple weeks ago. These styles are now available for download on my website. Just follow the link above, go into the downloads section, and the Layer Styles page. If you can't find it, email me and I'll be happy to send it to you. (hatch@actionfx.com)

I'm applying a Layer Style in that set called Gold Foil to the active layer. Here's the result:

I'm not entirely sure I want to alter this layer, so again I'm going to duplicate. Now I want to change gears and apply filters to this existing effect. Remember how we do that? We have to create a empty layer beneath the active layer, reselect the active layer and merge down (CTRL/Command>E, or Layer>Merge Down). This forces the layer to take on the attributes of the layer style permanently so we may apply filters to it, which is why I had you use a duplicate so we can backtrack if need be. True, we can back out with the History Palette, but I prefer a fail safe in my image also.

Now let's create another layer below the merged layer. Reselect your text if the selection is no longer active. We are going to use the old stroke and NOT the Layer Styles Stroke option. Go to Edit>Stroke, with the settings of Outside, 4. Color doesn't matter, as we are now going to apply Layer Styles to this layer.

Deselect your text, then with the strokes layer active, open the Layer Styles window. Select the Stroke Option, and enter the following Settings:

And here's the result:

Now to play with our stroked layer. Create a new layer below the stroked layer, select the stroked layer and merge down again. I'm applying a bevel to this layer with the layer styles, and I'm also changing the Hue>Saturation to taste. I'm going for a similar color... but feel free to do whatever you like in this regard. YOU HAVE THE POWER! (insert diabolical laughter here)

Now I want to bring out the wood grain and color a bit, so I'm going to duplicate my top layer, set it to overlay, and move the slider until I'm content with the color. Now we have a stylish text that could be duplicated over and over again...even applied to an interface, buttons, logo, etc. if we had the Gold Foil Layer Style in the Styles Palette and saved our steps in an action. I didn't do that this time, but the process would be easy to duplicate.

Some variations to this would be to add nails, or using Eye Candy 4000 it is very simple to add realistic knots to the wood texture. I could do that here, but that would take more space than I have available. Here's an example of where you could go to dress this up: