Metal mossy text effect Tutorial

Intro:

In this tutorial learn how to make a metal text effect with a mossy touch over it in photoshop.

Step 1:

Type in your text on a 400x200 document, I used #94928b as the background color and impact as the font (12.41 pt).



Right click the text layer in the layers window, choose blending options, then change the blending options to below.

In CS2 if you click the name of the blending option it will check the option and shows the options for changing the blending option, if you hit the check box it won't.

Click "Drop shadow" and change settings


Click "Bevel and Emboss" and change settings


Click "Gradient Overlay" and change settings

The gradient I used is a gradient that comes with photoshop but is not in the default gradient list, to load the gradient follow these steps.
Click the small arrow right off the gradient, then click the other small arrow that points to the right and choose "load gradients" then double-click the "metals" brush preset, then choose Steel bar and your done.

Click "Stroke" and change settings


Change the opacity of this layer to 77%, which will leave you with the result..

Step 2:

Take out the brush tool and choose the brush Oil heave flow dry brush, if you have the default brush set its the 6th from the bottom with a preset brush-size of 48, change the size to 302 px.

Change foreground color to black (Hit D on your keyboard), make a new layer with Ctrl+Shift+N, name this layer mossy, and brush over the text, click some more at the middle and a few corners where you want to have more moss.



Hold ctrl and click the text layer in the layers window, this will make a selection of the text layer. Now hit Ctrl+Shift+I to inverse the selection, then hit Delete on your keyboard to delete the parts surrounding the text.



Go to blending options for the mossy layer, and change the color overlay to color #2A3028, blend mode: normal and Opacity 100%, click ok. Now change the mode to Dissolve in the layers window, this'll make the mossy effect as you can see below.



without a white mossy layer added:

Now you have to redo step 2 and use the color white, this will make a bit more lightning and contrast on the text layer.

with a white mossy layer added:

Step 3:

Ctrl+Click the text layer, make a new layer, name this layer Shine, Take out the gradient tool , as gradient choose the foreground to background gradient, hit D on your keyboard to change the foreground and background colors to default, then X to switch both the colors making white the foreground. And make a gradient from the left of the text to somewhere near the middle.

Step 4:

Hide the background layer (layer 0), Make a new layer, name this one Finished, then hit ctrl+alt+shift+E to copy and paste all the VISIBLE layers in the layer we just created. The reason we did this is because we can add some lightning to the piece for a more mossy look, I got a small tip though never delete your original layers, it's allways nice to have the option to edit a seperate layer.

You can unhide the background layer now.

Now let's add the lightning, Go to Filter > Render > lightning effects, then change the settings to below.



Hide the original layers leaving only the "Finished" and 'Layer 0" visible, if you did everything like I said you'd probably have something similar to my finished piece.



Thanks for reading, join the forums! =)