Design an Awesome Electrified Metal Scrap Text Effect in Photoshop

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to Design an Electrified Text Effect in Photoshop. The focus of this tutorial is show you how you can combine serveral elements seamlessly using selection and layer blending modes, in order to create an eye-catching text effect. This is an intermedia level tutorial so some steps can be tricky, but why not have a try!

Note: The Photoshop tutorial is done in CS6 – therefore some screenshot may have slighting different layout as in the earlier version. Some brushes are exclusive to Photoshop CS6.

Here is a preview of the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

OK Let’s get started!

To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stocks:

Font

Scrap Texture

Lightning Image

Step 1

Create a document sized 1280px * 700px with black background. We begin by preparing some background texture – Load the Scrap Texture into Photoshop and select a portion of it, copy and paste the selection onto our document, resize to fit its height and width:

Use a soft eraser tool to remove the edges as shown below on this scrap texture:

Add the following 2 adjustment layers on top of this background texture:

Black and White

Levels

Layer mask on the levels adjustment layer:

and here is th effect you will have:

We cloud render some cloud down the bottom with the cloud filter on a new layer, set the layer opacity to around 30-40% so we have only a subtle effect:

Step 2

Use the font we downloaded and type some text onto our canvas, make sure you use a lighter font colour on the left and darker font colour on the right, as shown below:

Add a layer mask on this text layer and use a soft eraser with around 50% flow and opacity, fade some parts of the text as shown below:

Apply the following layer blending options to this text layer:

Bevel and Emboss

Contour

Stroke

Inner Shadow

Gradient Overlay

Outer Glow

and here is the effect you will have so far:

Step 3

We will add some scrap texture over the text. We will make a selection of the text layer, load the scrap texture into Photoshop and move this selection over to the texture, copy and paste:

Copy an paste the texture back onto our document, move this new layer slightly to the top-right, so the original text layer is visible:

Add the following 3 adjustment layers as clipping mask on this new texture layer:

Black and White

Levels

Curves

Go back to the texture layer and add a layer mask to it, use a soft eraser to remove the top half of the texture:

and here is the effect so far:

Step 4

Load the lightning image into Photoshop, use a 30px feather Lasso Tool to select the centre portion as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection over to our document, apply the follwing black and white adjustment settings to this new layer:

Ten apply the following Levels adjustment settings on this lightning layer:

and you will have the following effect:

Duplicate this layer a few times, resize and scatter them around the text, try using “Color Dodge” and “Screen” layer blending mode for best effect:

Step 5

We will add some flying metals to add some motions into the image. Let’s go back to our scrap image and select a piece as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection over to our docuemnt, distort it a bit and use a soft eraser to fade the edges:

Apply the following Levels adjustment settings to this layer:

Again we duplicate this layer a few times and scatter them around the canvas, apply varying layer opacities and sizes on each flying metal layer to increase image depth:

Step 6

We’re almost done :) For some final touches, I flatten the image then duplicate the background layer, apply this Accented Edges settings to the duplicated layer:

This will give the text a bright edge:

Add the following 2 adjustment layers on top:

Selective Color

Curves

and you will have the following final effect: (click to enlarge)

That’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy it and find it useful! Drop me a comment below if you have any question.

Till next time, have a great day!