This month, we’ll be keeping with the word effects, and I’m going to show you how to make a carved/chiselled effect on wood, metal or concrete.

There’s two ways I’ve found to do this, so I’ll be showing you both. They both take roughly the same amount of skill, but one of them works better for making the words looked carved into a variety of backgrounds, and the other is more specific to the three backgrounds listed above.

This is the first way, which looks best on either a wood, metal or concrete background, using the Times New Roman or another similar font.

This is the second way to do it, and as you can see, it easily works on a non-wood, metal or concrete background, and doesn’t need to be done using the Times New Roman font.

Way #1:

Step 1. Get a metal/wood/concrete background. You can do so by either finding one on a royalty-free image site (such as Pixabay.com) or, you can right-click and save the two pictures below to use as the background for this tutorial.

Step 2: Once you have the pictures, open PHSH and make a new document. Drag the pictures to your work document and resize if necessary. Once that’s done, type a phrase or sentence you want to change. For the purposes of this tutorial, I’ll just use ‘Carved’. Also, to keep things simple, I’m just going to use the Times New Roman font, and made it 150pt size. (My canvas size is roughly 25cm x 17cm)

With this way to do it, you’ll want to make sure that your font colour is just plain black.

Step 3: Right-click on the Type layer (‘carved’ word) and go to the Blending Options.

In the Default Blending Options (the panel that opens right when you click on it), go to Blend Mode, and select Screen from the drop-down menu.

Step 4: Once you select Screen, you’ll notice the word disappeared. Don’t freak out, it’s still there (as evidenced in the Layers panel), we just can’t see it right now.

Next, go to Bevel and Emboss, and copy the values listed below:

• Style: Outer Bevel
• Technique: Chisel Hard
• Depth: 200%
• Size: 12 (or 6 depending on how the finished product looks)
• Angle: -45, 30 (be sure to uncheck the Use Global Light box)
• Highlight Mode: Overlay, Opacity: 100
• Shadow Mode: Multiply, Opacity: 75

Step 5: Once you’ve got that all changed, then go down the left-side list to Inner Shadow, and input these values:

• Blend Mode: Multiply
• Opacity: 100%
• Angle: 120 (uncheck Use Global Light)
• Distance: 16
• Choke: 16
• Size: 12

Once that’s done, go down the list again to Colour Overlay, and apply these values:

• Black
• Blend Mode: Overlay
• Opacity: 55

Once you’re done applying all three of those effects, click Okay to apply them to the Layer.

You should notice the text changing while applying each of those effects, and once you apply the Colour Overlay, you should notice the word now looks like it’s carved into the wood.

And that’s it for this way! You can press on the Eye symbol in the Layers panel that’s next to each Layer, so you can see the effect on the teal metal and the concrete backgrounds.

Now that I’ve shown you how to do that way, I’ll show you how to do it the second way below. Be sure to save the above work so you don’t lose it!

Way #2

Step 1: Open a fresh document, and drag and drop any other background you want to use. (This time it doesn’t have to be a wood/metal or concrete picture) For this one, I’ll use a room with wallpaper and a chalkboard.

Step 2: Type the word/phrase you want to use. Again, I’ll just be using ‘carved’ for the tutorial.

Step 3: This time, go to Fill, which is in the top of the Layers panel, and change it to 0%.

Step 3: Now, we’ll be going back to the Blending Options, and back to Bevel and Emboss. Change the values to:

• Style: Outer Bevel
• Technique: Chisel Hard
• Depth: 100%
• Direction: Up
• Size: 10, Soften: 0
• Angle: 145, 40 Degrees (Uncheck Use Global Light)
• Highlight Mode: Screen, Opacity: 75%
• Shadow Mode: Multiply, Opacity: 75%

Now go back down to Inner Shadow:

• Blend Mode: Multiply (Black), Opacity: 90%
• Angle: 145 Degrees (Uncheck Use Global Light)
• Distance: 15, Choke: 30, Size: 15

And lastly, back down to Colour Overlay:

• Blend Mode: Soft Light
• Colour: Black
• Opacity: 75%

Once you’re done that, click Okay to apply the effects. Don’t forget to save your work!

As they are now, both these effects look pretty much the same. The one (big) difference here, is the first way tends to not look right if you try to use a font that’s not close in nature to Times New Roman, and doesn’t work that well if you change the font colour from black.

This second way works for a myriad of different fonts and colours. It’s also faster to do, which can help save you time so you’re not spending too much time on one effect.

Another thing I’ve found works best using the second way, is changing the colour used in the Colour Overlay.

For example:

Looks fine on the chalkboard background, too. Although we’d need to rotate the text to make it match.

Here, I used way #2, but instead of using black for the Colour Overlay, I used red – giving the poster a bit more of a morbid feel by making the words look like they have blood in the dents.

Feel free to play around with different colours, angles to see which combination works well for what you need. Also, a quick side note: the Distance/Choke/Size values will most likely vary depending on the size of your font. Don’t be afraid to play around to see how the effect will look in different situations.

As always, don’t forget to save your work as either (or both) a PSD and/or PNG file. I’d hate to have you get the effect just right and then lose all that hard work because you forgot to save it!

Next time I’ll show you how to give a picture a transparent background. Keep your eye out for that July 29^th.

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