24 Photoshop Tutorials for Custom Text Effects 2024

Although less emphasized in web design, text effects play a big role in our experience with media-type content. Videos, creative pictures, artistic digital work, all use some sort of text effect techniques to achieve a unique experience for the user viewing the picture/artwork. Video games use text effects, and all these, or at least most of them, have been created using tools such as Photoshop. Why? Because Photoshop is a professional industry software that can allow graphic designers to create unique graphical effects in any shape or form imaginable, which of course includes text effects.

For example, posters and flyers are usually designed so that the name of the event or cause stands out the most, which is achieved through text effects. We can take a simple word such as “love” and completely transform it into something unique, authentic and so otherworldly that people will begin to think that such a design was achieved with the use of hand-drawn graphics, when in fact it is all digital. There isn’t much to be said about text effects, other than you need to know what you are looking for, and then use the tutorial to achieve the same text effect. These tutorials are also a wonderful way to explore more about Photoshop, and learn things that you might otherwise not learn if not through practice.

How to Create an Iridescent Snake-Textured Text Effect in Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop tutorials for text effects, much like any other category of tutorials, range in different difficulties and lengths, that will also be the kind of theme you’ll notice throughout this accumulation of tutorials. We start with beginner difficulty and quick length text effect guide on producing a text effect resembling snakeskin. The work that goes into this one is all about textures, patterns, and layers. You will be working with a couple of unique fonts and textures created by graphic designers all over the web. All downloads for the text effect are provided within the tutorial.

How to Create a Grass-Covered Spring Text Effect in Adobe Photoshop

Difficulty within this tutorial remains at a beginner level, but the length increases to medium, meaning that you will learn much more within a single tutorial. The effect, in turn, is a “spring grass” effect that you can use to amplify your text with, it even has a little yellow flowers effect added; wonderful. These are the kind of text effects that you will see promotional flyers use, basically, anything that would have to go out on a physical piece of paper or other physical formats, because it really resonates with the season that the text is presented in, and people easily have their attention caught. Filters and layer styles are big within this tutorial, including brushes and textures, so it’s a good opportunity to brush up on your Photoshop skills, or simply learn something new. The great thing about these tutorials, they all provide unique point of view of how to create stunning graphic designs using a single software; Adobe Photoshop.

How to Create a Futuristic Metal Text Effect in Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop has made it possible for anyone, anywhere, to create stunning graphic designs at a fraction of a cost. Even though Adobe provides plenty of tutorials and documentation to help new users get started, those who have worked with Photoshop for years also act as guides for others. This is why we feel that lists like these, Photoshop tutorials, are an important asset to the overall growth process of those who wish to learn the ins and outs of Photoshop. Futuristic effects are popular amongst those working in technology, music, and gaming. If you wish to learn how to create the text effect of a futuristic metal plate — we highly recommend the one you’re looking at right now. Great choice of fonts and textures, and will add plenty of insight to your already existing Photoshop knowledge. But, if learning this beginner-difficulty tutorial is too hard for you, just grab the finalized download at the end; that’s the beauty of these guides, they usually provide a final download of what you’re going to create.

How to Create a Rusted Metal Text Effect in Adobe Photoshop

Rustic, and rusted patterns might seem a little shallow when looked at it in real life, especially with a lack of proper lighting. Still, when we take those patterns and transform them into digital content, the pattern suddenly becomes something completely different, something out of a fairytale book, because how could a rustic pattern ever look so good? There are many car racing games that use rustic patterns on text, but also a lot of video-type media that benefits from big rusty letters. The level of difficulty you will be working with there is climbing up to intermediate, meaning that your Photoshop skills and understanding will be tested relentlessly. The length of the tutorial is medium, allowing you to digest and understand the process that goes into producing a rusted metal text effect using Adobe’s flagship tool Photoshop.

How to Create a 3D Antique Metal Text Effect in Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop is a universal tool. It’s not just forum signatures and forum avatars that you can create with Photoshop, the possibilities are endless, including the crafting of 3D-related text effects, and otherwise 3D related effects. The tutorials demo is going to be the words LOVE in 3D effect, layered on top of a ‘valentine’s style’ photograph. This is the perfect chance to learn how to create stunning 3D text effects that are accompanied by background photographs. Cards, promotional stuff, marketing stuff, video content, all these categories can benefit greatly from some 3D enhancement. First you will be working with creating the actual text and shapes for the word ‘love’, then moving on to the professional aspects of Photoshop and creating custom 3D layers for your text, and when that is all said and one, it will be time to put everything together into a single piece — lighting, rendering, texture and other settings will test your patience, but you only have to learn these tutorials once to understand how to do it for any other custom situation thereafter.

How to Create a Retro Chrome Text Effect in Adobe Photoshop

Retro designs have always played a big role in the evolution of graphics. Retro is cool, it’s artistic, it’s friendly, and generally people love to use this style to promote, advertise, showcase, publicize, and bring something more alive than it already is. This might be one of the shortest tutorials you’ll be working with, but offers a lot anyhow. First you’ll need to create a background that will bring the retro text more to life, give it more meaning. Then you’ll begin work on text layers, which is also where you will finalize all the retro aspects of the text. The end result: the word “grease” with a stunning retro effect on top of a blurred car background.

How to Create a Shiny 3D Text Effect in Adobe Photoshop

The difficulty is going to be intermediate, and the tutorial is of great (long) length. What you will be learning to reproduce, is a shiny 3D effect for all your text. At first glance, this text effect resembles a donut effect, or perhaps a candy wrapper, but throughout the tutorial you’ll have plenty of chances to adjust the appearance of the effect yourself. The layers are in great quantities, which will give a glimpse of how deeply Photoshop files can go, and how precisely each of the elements/visuals can be structured to create a beautiful end-result.

How to Create a Glittering Gold Thread Text Effect in Adobe Photoshop

Girls love to play around with glitter, but lately it seems that American rap artists love it too, or do they call that gold? Well, whatever the case, if you’re after a glittery gold text effect, we have one such tutorial that will make the process of reproducing glittery images a true breeze. All you have to do is create a glittery texture, give it some styling, make a background image that will help to reflect the glitter effect, and do some final styling touches. Seriously, this tutorial will supply a ton of future ideas to use when creating simple Photoshop text effects.

How to Create a Raindrops Text Effect in Adobe Photoshop

Do technological capabilities limit Photoshop? Hardly. Photoshop is happy to work alongside anything your creative juices are giving back to you, including producing a text effect like raindrops. Yes, raindrops. Maybe you’re one of those people who launch their own “Rainy Websites” where the sound of the rain is soothing you to sleep, and you need a good background image to use, perhaps one that you could animate too. Well, here is the ultimate tutorial to achieve that result. It’s short, it’s beginner friendly, and if you can’t wait to use it.. well… you will need to finish the tutorial, because unfortunately there are no direct downloads available for the end-result PSD of this text effect.

How to Create a Luxurious Text Effect in Adobe Photoshop

Marketing projects for expensive cars, houses, and other luxurious items is going to be all about using the most luxurious effects, both within standalone ads on websites, and on ads in video marketing. Luxury has that effect of shininess, the effect of bling added to it, and we can’t forget about the gold texture. That’s what you will learn how to recreate with this tutorial from Jonas Stensgaard, an amazing Photoshop designer who has produced great amounts of work on sites like GraphicRiver, where he is happily sitting at more than 3,500+ sales for all of his graphic design work. Jonas does a great job at taking beginners and experienced Photoshop users on straight to the point journey of creating a luxurious text effect.

How to Create a Wrapped Ribbon Text Effect in Adobe Illustrator

Andrei Marius is an Adobe Illustrator Guru. He has published hundreds of unique tutorials about designing and illustrating, and his work has seen many millions of unique viewers. Who knows, how much of what we have seen on the web has been possible to create because of Andrei’s generous vision. Anyhow, here’s a challenging tutorial for creating a very unique text effect using Photoshop: it’s called a “wrapped ribbon”. It literally means that you will be crafting a text effect that will look like a wrapped ribbon. As with all unique ideas, they have their uses, so you have to decide whether this kind of effect will benefit your project, workflow, or not. Always helps to give clients some unique perspectives too, more often than not, they don’t know what they want.

Create 3D Star Light Text Effect In Photoshop

James Qu wants you to take your Photoshop skills to the next level, with this amazing tutorial on creating a start light effect that features 3D. The tutorial has netted more than 12,000+ views, which is an indicator that there is a lot of demand for 3D-related PS tutorials. You don’t really need to be concerned about the length of the tutorial, it is quickly explained and narrowed down in a couple of simple steps, but anyone can also grab the free PSD download for the finalized product.

Luxury Text Style For Valentine Party Flyer Photoshop Tutorial

We’ve seen a few tutorials related to 3D effects, we’ve seen a few related to luxury effects, and love has also been all in the mix. The luxury text style is a unique combination that features each of those elements individually, so perhaps a good tutorial for you practice to recreate of your own, and come back to the important bits if you’re forgetting how to achieve a particular result. Valentine’s Day is of course over, but there are so many more years ahead of us where this day will be celebrated, and why not spend some time learning how to create a love text effect before the time comes, the more we know, the more creative we become.

Shiny Reflective 3D Text Effect in Photoshop CC 2014

Of all the text effect tutorials so far, we have reached one that’s truly Advanced, and will test your limits indefinitely. Even those who have completed the tutorial are writing about how they’ve missed different aspects of the tutorial, and their images have come out wrong. Well, don’t worry, because the author (Rose) is happily going to help you with making any changes to achieve the desired end-result. You’ll be exploring 3D, reflective styles, custom shapes, and extensive step by step instructions for achieving a complex graphical design result.

Create Mysterious “Energy Flow” Rock Text Effect In Photoshop

James Qu from PSDVault does a great job at coming up with unique effect ideas, such as this mysterious flow of energy effect that we can imagine being used for feature films, but also inspirational genre-specific videos on YouTube, gamers will abundantly enjoy this one too. Compared to the previous James tutorial we showed you, this one is far more complex, but at the same time yields much deeper understanding of layers and overlays and how two pictures can work together to create a unique experience. Lovely, lovely stuff.

Create Delicious Donut Text That Will Make You Hungry

interesting thing about food effects, they work really great in those situations where the context is talking about food. Such as this one here, the watery donut text effect. Surely Dunkin Donuts could benefit from some donut-infused graphics effects on their website or promotional stuff? You only have 35 beautiful steps to go through, but as you already see in the example.. the results are delicious! Take it easy with these tutorials when you’re learning new things, often they can overstimulate our brains because we’re not used to creating something so specific, and did we mention already; delicious.

Simple 3D Acrylic Text Effect in Photoshop CS6

As popular as acrylic styling is, we didn’t see that many tutorials of this sort, so to make up for that — here’s one that’s amplified with juicy 3D knowledge. Take your Photoshop skills to the next level with a another amazing Adobe Photoshop tutorial from the lovely Rose, who is the sole owner behind Textuts — a digital collection of some of the most insightful, the most thorough, and the most creative tutorials in relation to Photoshop that you’ll put your eyes on. Wonderful stuff, and the tutorial is no exception. Advanced level PS users will be challenged to their core to infuse an acrylic design with new layers and patterns.

Photoshop tutorial: Master 3D type effects

The first time we looked at the end-result of this tutorial, it seemed surreal. How can a result so beautiful be achieved? And you’re about to find out. This is some next-level modern and professional Photoshop work that will imprint an understanding of 3D objects within Photoshop. You will master the art of creating a text effect that’s going to attract a new kind of following to your works of art. Although the tutorial takes only 2 hours to complete, you’re going to learn about many Photoshop secrets and clever features to bring about a one of a kind design.

Create a Summer Inspired 3D Text Effect in Photoshop

Summer’s always around a corner. Summer parties, summer gatherings, BBQs and other summer activities are high on the list of things to design new stuff for. Media companies and public service companies are frequently reaching out to graphic designers to ask them for unique pieces of work that are in relation with their needs, and sometimes that means creating a beautiful Summer poster for upcoming events. The tutorial here is basically the perfect solution for creating a post that’s injected with those summer vibes; beach, water, blue colors, palm trees, and a welcome message. The only downside, this is a long tutorial aimed at advanced PS users. If you’re a beginner, it is the perfect opportunity to challenge yourself.

How to Create Colorful Wooden 3D Text

Wooden text effects are really cool. Wood is cool! Trees are cool too. And to be able to use these amazing textures in correlation with 3D effects.. that’s just taking it to a whole new level. You will need to know that although this tutorial uses Photoshop, it is also using Cinema 4D to achieve the exposed text effect, whilst Photoshop is used to finalize the design concept and put on some final design amplifications. Aimed at experts, this tutorial will take a few hours of your schedule. It will be absolutely worth it.

Quick Tip: Create a Neon Text Effect in Photoshop

Neon text effects! Those were the early web days..bustling hacker communities, insightful developer communities.. the old-school web as one of a kind, and it was packed with websites and other web elements that relied a lot of neon graphics. It was a phase, and some are still moving through that phase, but for others — neon just resembles a certain coolness effect. The Matrix movies used a lot of neon effects, and so many video games use neon too… Go to China and you will explode at the amount of neon that these guys use. The demand for neon related effects is always going to be high, and it’s amazing that creating such an effect is actually very easy and anyone is going to be able to pull it off the first time they try. There’s a good reason this one was called a quick tip.

Hipster Text Effect in Photoshop CS6

How about them psychological personality traits, hipsters love to call themselves hip and associate themselves with some funky stuff. We aren’t judging though, and couldn’t care less what people call them, we care about giving people what they look for, and if Hipster Text Effects for PS is your thing, then we have to do everything in our power to deliver on that desire. So here we are, a simple to follow Photoshop tutorial that teaches you how to create a Hipster-like text effect within your Photoshop workflow. End result you might ask? It’s quite creamy.

How to Create a Colorful Text Design in Photoshop

Woohoo, we’re almost done with our list of tutorials, are you excited yet to get going with learning how to recreate these amazing text effects we’ve been exposed to? We sure hope so, and to add more to that excitement, here’s a tutorial on how to achieve the result of a “modern, digitized, stunning letters combination” effect. This is a powerful concept that will find use in music industry, and anything related to electronic arts.

Tutorial: Cookie Text Effect

We didn’t do that many tutorials on food effects, except for that donut one, so the last one is going to be about cookies; perhaps you should treat yourself to some cookies and milk after having gone through this immense compilation of the best Photoshop tutorials for creating custom text effects that can be used in any design situation imaginable. Yep, we think you should. This cookie-effect will be easy to accomplish, and is provided by the amazing guys at PSDchat. Give them a shout in the comments if you felt like they’ve contributed to your learning experience of Photoshop.

Photoshop Tutorials for Custom Text Effects

Now that was an interesting pool of tutorials. It took us several hours of research, and even more time to actually write and put all this together to provide a solid resource of tutorials related to text effects. During our research, we found that many of the tutorials are outdated; the website not working, using old versions of Photoshop, or using outdated features, so we made sure that the tutorials we do point to in this post, are all going to be supporting modern Photoshop (CS5, and CS6, but also CS4 in some cases), and that all the tutorials have been shared in the recent 2 years (with a few exceptions), so that they’re relevant, and also widely used amongst regular Photoshop users.