Create glowing 3D text and beautiful effects using only non-destructive Photoshop techniques. This tutorial will show you how to create 3D text, give it a futuristic blue glow, and finish it off with a modern bokeh and grid background. There are also a few really cool Photoshop tricks scattered in this tutorial. To follow this tutorial, you’ll need Photoshop CS5 Extended (Not the regular version).

What You’ll be Making

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Download the PSD

TRON-Inspired Text.zip | 5.98 MB

Download from Website

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TRON-Inspired Text Photoshop Tutorial

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Tutorial Resources

Before you begin this Photoshop tutorial, make sure you have these fonts installed. You’ll need to have them installed before running Photoshop or else you won’t be able to use it. You also need the extended version of Photoshop CS5 (not the regular version).

• TR2N Font – Jeff Bell
• Raleway Thin – Matt McInerney

You can substitute the Raleway Thin font with Neue Helvetica 35 Thin if you have it.

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Step 1

Start by creating a new 1920×1080 pixels document. To create a new document, go to File > New.

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Step 2

Make the background black. You can do this quickly by pressing Ctrl/Cmd+I or going to Image > Adjustments > Invert to invert the color.

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Step 3

Type in the text you like to use with the TR2N font with a font size of 480pt. It’s best to use something around 4 characters. I’ll be writing TR2N instead of TRON to give credit to the author Jeff Bell for this beautiful font.

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Step 4

Duplicate the text layer then rename it to TR2N 3D. Make sure this layer is positioned as the top layer.

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Step 5

Make sure you have the TR2N 3D text layer selected then go to 3D > Repoussé > Text Layer. You’ll get a popup that asks if you want to rasterize the text – just click yes. If you don’t see the 3D menu, you might not be using Photoshop CS5 extended. There are two versions of Photoshop and the 3D tools are only available in Photoshop CS5 Extended.

In the Repoussé tool, reduce the Depth value so that the thickness of your 3D text looks similar to ours. Don’t click OK yet.

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Step 6

In the Materials area, click on the drop down menu then choose the sphere with no texture. This will remove all the textures from your text. Don’t click OK yet.

Here’s how the text currently look.

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Step 7

In the Bevel settings, select Front then set the height to 5, width to 0.5, and contour to the deep cove contour. Click OK to apply the changes.

This bevel settings you just set gives your text a slight bevel like this:

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Step 8

We’re done creating the 3D text! Now that we’re done, we can allow Photoshop to improve the quality of the 3D text.

One of the most common problems people experience when trying out the 3D tools is that they get jagged low quality edges. Photoshop does this to improve the performance while you’re editing. Once you’re done, you can change the quality and have Photoshop render a higher quality image.

This quality setting is hidden in the 3D panel. Go to Window > 3D to bring up the 3D panel. In the Quality drop down menu, select Ray Traced Final.

Photoshop will now render the image and you’ll see a blue grid moving across your image. This process will take awhile depending on your computers speed. If you press anything, Photoshop will pause the render. To resume the render, just right-click on the layer and choose Resume Progressive Render. When the text quality looks good enough for you, simply click anywhere to stop the render.

After the render, you’ll get a smooth text like this.