Create Simple 3D Text In Photoshop

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Written by Steve Patterson.
In this Photoshop text effects tutorial, we'll learn how to create simple 3D text:

The final 3D text effect.

Let's get started!

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Step 1: Create a New Document

To begin, let's create a brand new Photoshop document. Go up to the File menu at the
top of the screen and choose New, or for a quicker way, press the keyboard
shortcut Ctrl+N (Win) / Command+N (Mac). Whichever way you choose, Photoshop
pops up the New Document dialog box. Enter the size you need for your document. For
this tutorial, I'm going to enter a Width of 6 inches, a Height of 4 inches, and
a Resolution of 300 pixels/inch, which is a standard resolution for professional quality
printing. I'm also going to set my Background Contents to White, which will set the
background color of my new document to white. When you're done, click OK in the top
right corner of the dialog box to exit out of it. Your new Photoshop document will appear
on the screen.
Create a new Photoshop document using the New Document dialog box.

Step 2: Select The Type Tool From Photoshop's Tools

Palette
To add text to the document, we'll need to use Photoshop's Type Tool. Select it from the
Tools palette, or press the letter T on your keyboard to select it with the shortcut:

Select the Type Tool.

Step 3: Choose A Font From The Options Bar

Next, we need to choose a font. With the Type Tool selected, you'll notice that
the Options Bar at the top of the screen has changed to show the options for the Type
Tool. Choose whichever font you'd like to use from the list of fonts that you currently
have available on your computer. This 3D effect works best with fonts that have big,
thick letters. I'm going to choose Impact. You can also choose a size for your text if you
like, but it's not really necessary at this point since we can easily change the size of the
text later, as we'll see. For now, all we need is the font:

Choose a font from the Options Bar.

Step 4: Choose A Color For Your Text
Next, we need to choose a color for our text. If you look further to the right in the
Options Bar, you'll see a color swatch. The color swatch shows the current text color. To
change the color, simply click on the color swatch:

Change the color of the text by clicking on the color swatch in the Options Bar.
This will bring up Photoshop's Color Picker. Choose whichever color you'd like to use
for your text. I'm going to select a bright shade of red. When you're done, click OK in
the top right corner of the Color Picker to exit out of it:

Choose a new color for the text from the Color Picker, then click OK to exit out of it.
The color swatch in the Options Bar will change to show the color you've selected.

Step 5: Add Your Text To The Document

With our font and text color selected, click inside the document and add your text. I'm
going to type "PHOTOSHOP", all in capital letters to enhance the effect. Don't worry if
the text appears too large or too small for now. We can fix that in a moment:
Click inside the document and add your text.
When you're done typing, click on the checkmark in the Options Bar to accept the text
and exit out of text editing mode:

Exit out of text editing mode by clicking on the checkmark in the Options Bar.
If we look at our Layers palette, we can see that Photoshop has conveniently placed our
text on its own layer above the Background layer. This is what will allow us to work with
the text independently from the white background behind it:
The text appears on its own layer in the Layers palette.

Step 6: Resize The Type If Needed

If your find that your text is too small (or too large), we can easily fix that using
Photoshop's Free Transform command. First, make sure your text layer is selected in
the Layers palette (selected layers are highlighted in blue). Then go up to the Edit menu
at the top of the screen and choose Free Transform. You can also select the Free
Transform command with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+T (Win) / Command+T (Mac):

Select "Free Transform" from the Edit menu.

You'll see the Free Transform box and handles appear around your text in the
document. To resize the text, hold down your Shift key, then click any of the corner
handles (the little squares) and drag the corner inward to make the text smaller or
outward to make it larger. Holding the Shift key down as you drag constrains the aspect
ratio so you don't accidentally distort the shape of the text as you're resizing it. I'm going
to make my text just a little bit bigger by dragging the handle in the bottom right corner
outward. You can also move the text if you need to by clicking anywhere inside of the
Free Transform box and dragging the text to a new location inside the document:
Resize and move the text as needed with Free Transform.
When you're done, press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) to accept the change and exit out
of the Free Transform command.

Step 7: Convert The Text To A Shape

To create our 3D effect, we need to alter the perspective of our text. There's only one
problem though. Photoshop doesn't allow us to alter the perspective of text (see how
that can be a problem?). To show you what I mean, make sure you still have the text
layer selected, then go up to the Edit menu at the top of the screen and
select Transform from the list. A secondary menu will appear showing all the various
ways we can transform the contents of the layer we currently have selected. Notice how
the Distort and Perspective options are grayed out? That means they're currently
unavailable to us, and that's because Photoshop can't perform either of these two types
of transformations on text.
The solution is to convert our text layer into what's called a shape layer. By converting
the text to a shape, we'll be able to change the perspective of it and create our effect.
The only downside to converting text to a shape is that the type will no longer be
editable. In this case though, since we have no need to edit our text, we don't need to
worry about it.
With the text layer still selected, go up to the Layer menu at the top of the screen,
choose Type, and then choose Convert to Shape:
Go to Layer > Type > Convert to Shape.
If we look in the Layers palette, we can see that the text layer now looks completely
different, and that's because it's no longer a text layer. Photoshop has converted it to a
shape layer, which means we're now free to apply a Perspective transformation to it and
create our 3D text effect:

The text layer has been converted to a shape layer.

Step 8: Change The Perspective

Go back up to the Edit menu. You'll see that the Transform option we looked at a
moment ago has been replaced with a new option named Transform Path. Again, that's
because we're dealing now with a shape. Choose Transform Path from the list. When
the secondary menu appears, you'll see that both the Distort and Perspective options
are now available. Choose Perspective from the list:

Go to Edit > Transform Path > Perspective.

The same box and handles that we saw earlier when we selected the Free Transform
command will appear around the text (shape). The difference is, we're now working in
Perspective mode. To change the perspective of the text and give it a three dimensional
look, simply click on the handle in the bottom right corner and drag it straight down. As
you drag, the height of the right side of the text will increase from its center, while the
left side will remain unchanged:

Click on the bottom right corner handle and drag downward.

When you're happy with the perspective shift, press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) to
accept the transformation. Your text should now look something like this:

The text now appears with a 3D perspective.

Step 9: Create Multiple Copies Of The Shape Layer, Each

One Moved Slightly Further To The Right
This next step is the fun part. We're going to very quickly create multiple copies of our
shape layer, each one moved one pixel further to the right from the previous one. This
will give our letters some depth. First, select the Move Tool from the Tools palette, or
just press the letter V on your keyboard to select it with the shortcut. This trick only
works with the Move Tool selected:

Select the Move Tool.

With the Move Tool selected and the shape layer selected in the Layers palette, hold
down your Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key and press the right arrow key on your
keyboard. Then press it again. Then again. And again. Notice what's happening? Each
time you press the right arrow key with the Alt / Option key held down, you're creating a
new copy of the shape layer and you're moving the new copy one pixel over to the right.
Holding down Alt / Option tells Photoshop to create a new copy of the shape each time
rather than simply moving the existing shape. The more times you press the right arrow
key, the more copies of the layer you'll create, and the more depth we give to our
letters.
Keep pressing the right arrow key until you're happy with the results. In my case, I
pressed the arrow key a total of 68 times, creating 68 copies of my shape, each one
moved one pixel further to the right. The number of times you press the arrow key will
depend on the resolution of the document you're working with. When you're done, your
text should look something like this:

Hold down Alt (Win) / Option (Mac), then press the Right arrow key multiple times to give the
letters depth.
Step 10: Move The Original Shape Layer To The Top Of
The Layer Stack In The Layers Palette
Each time we created a new copy of our shape, we created a new shape layer in the
Layers palette, and Photoshop placed each new layer directly above the previous layer.
In my case, my Layers palette now contains 68 copies of my original shape layer. The
original shape layer is sitting above the Background layer, with all the copies piled on
top of it. You can tell it's the original because it's the only shape layer that doesn't
contain the word "copy" in its name.

We need to move that original layer to the very top of the pile, and there's an easy way
to do it. First, click on the original layer in the Layers palette to select it. Then,
press Ctrl+Shift+] (Win) / Command+Shift+] (Mac). That's the right bracket key ("]") in
case you're wondering. This convenient shortcut will instantly move the currently
selected layer directly to the top of the layer stack:

The original shape layer now appears above the other layers in the Layers palette.

Step 11: Merge All The Copies Together

With our original layer now at the very top of the layer stack, we need to merge all of
those copies of the shape layer down to one layer. Click on the layer directly below the
original layer in the Layers palette (in other words, the second layer from the top). Then
use the scroll bar on the right of the Layers palette to scroll down to the layer directly
above the Background layer. Don't just click on it though to select it because that will
deselect the layer you just selected at the top. Instead, hold down the Shift key on the
keyboard and then click on the layer to select it. This will select both layers at the same
time, along with every layer in between them. All of these layers will appear highlighted
in blue in the Layers palette.
With all of our copied layers now selected, go up to the Layer menu at the top of the
screen and choose Merge Layersdown near the bottom of the list. Or for a faster way,
press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+E (Win) / Command+E (Mac):
Go to Layer > Merge Layers.
Photoshop will merge all of the selected layers into a single layer. If we look in our
Layers palette, we can see that we now have only three layers. The Background layer is
on the bottom, the original shape layer is on the top, and in between them is our newly
merged layer:

All of the shape layer copies have been merged into a single layer.

Step 12: Add A Black-To-White Gradient To The Merged

Layer
To give our letters a truly 3D appearance, let's complete things by adding a simple
lighting effect. Or at least, something that looks like a lighting effect. Click on the merged
layer in the Layers palette to select it if it's not selected already. Then click on the Layer
Styles icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. A list of all the available layer styles will
appear. Click on Gradient Overlay to select it:
Select a Gradient Overlay layer style from the bottom of the Layers palette.
This will bring up Photoshop's Layer Style dialog box set to the Gradient Overlay options
in the middle column. We want to use a black to white gradient for our fake lighting
effect. If you already have the black to white gradient selected, you can skip this next
step. If you have some other gradient selected, click on the gradient preview area in the
middle of the options:

Click on the gradient preview area in the Layer Style dialog box to choose a new gradient.
This brings up the Gradient Picker, showing us all the available gradients we can
choose from. The one we want is the Black, White gradient, third from the left, top row.
If you have Tool Tips enabled in Photoshop's Preferences, you'll see the name of the
gradient appear when you hover over the thumbnail. Click on it to select it, then
click OK in the top right corner to accept it:
Choose the Black, White gradient.
Back in the main Gradient Overlay options, you'll see the gradient preview area now
showing the black to white gradient (if it wasn't already). Below it are a couple of
important options. Make sure the Style option is set to Linear and the gradient Angle is
set to 90°:

Make sure the Style option is set to Linear and that the Angle is set to 90°.
Click OK when you're done to exit out of the Layer Style dialog box, and we're done!
Photoshop applies the black to white gradient to the merged layer, creating a shadow
effect on the letters and completing our simple 3D text effect: