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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TRON-Inspired Text.zip | 5.98 MB

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TRON-Inspired Text Photoshop Tutorial

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.

Step 1

Start by creating a new 1920x1080 pixels document. To create a new document, go to File > New.

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.

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.

Step 4

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

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.

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.