Introduction

In this tutorial we will be learning how to create a realistic Golden “Bling” Text. There are a lot of different “Bling” text tutorials out there and I wanted to create my own, more advanced and expressive. This one is sure to catch any viewers eyes and a great way to add detail to your site or presentation.

The skills for this tutorial are pretty much just basic knowledge in how to work in Photoshop to be able to finish up this tutorial. We will have two options when saving the final result. Either we will just use it as a plain “image” with background and all or we can save it as a “.png” and make it transparent for use on any website. We will go through both of the options.

Step 1

The first thing we need to do is to set up our work area. Open Photoshop and create a new project. I have chosen to write “MINERVITY” (the name of this blog) and therefor I have have set the size of my workspace in Photoshop to: Width: 568, Height 128.

As we will be working with a lot of copy and paste here there is a some addition space that we could need so add another 100 on the height to make it more suited for this purpose

Step 2

The font we’re going to be using is “Rockwell Extra Bold” as it’s best suited for what we are going to create. I am sure there are several other fonts this would work on as well. Your imagination is the limit. But for this tutorial this is what we’re going to use. Rockwell Extra Bold is included in Office 2003 and should you not have it then you can just find something similar right here: 1001font.com

After making sure you have the font or have found something similar in type, let’s type what we want to write. Type your word of choice in the upper part of your work area as we will be using the lower part as our “sketch” copy and paste area.

Use the color “#472000” as it will simulate our golden background. After typing your choice of word and changing the color to the above you should now have something looking similar to this: (Re-sized to fit this blog)

Step 3

Now, go ahead and change your background color to pure black (”#000000“) as we will be working with some shine bevel composing now. Also, with the text layer selected we’re going to add some bevel:ing to that text. Open up your “Blending” window (right click the layer and choose “Blending Options…”).

In that window chose “Bevel and Emboss” and use these settings:

Step 4

It’s now time to set up our color “palette” that will make our text “Bling” like no other. The next step will be the monumental task of the whole process. But now worries, you’ll be done before you know it. So, create a new layer and underneath your “Text” in your new layer create five different circles measuring Width: 3, Height: 3. Remember to delete that center pixel to make it look like a hole in it. It’s just 1 pixel so that should be easy.

Choose the colors that you feel your text best is suited for. I am going with that “Gold” bling kind of look so I have chosen colors grading from bright yellow to deep brown to simulate that gold feeling. This is what I ended up with:

Step 5

Now were going to add these circles randomly on top of our text to simulate that really cool “Bling” effect. This may take a while but it will be well worth it! I assure you.

So, create another five layers and name them “Bright“, “Light“, “Mid Tone“, “Shade” and “Dark” so we know what they contain.

After doing this, start adding these circles by “copy & paste”:ing them on top of your text in their setup layers. make sure you add them in the right layers as we will add different effects to each layer later in the tutorial. Do it randomly and going from Bright in the top to Dark in the bottom. Mix it up though. Well worth the work. Here I have finished the up the first letter “M” in my design:

Just want to show how I actually set up my layers and what goes in where. All the “Bright” circles is added to the “Bright” layer which later comes in really handy when we’re going to add some effects to the whole thingy. Here’s how my layers are set up:

Now, continue adding all those circles, “Bright” from the top and “Dark” from the bottom randomly until the entire text is finished.

Step 6

Now when we have our text fully plotted out with our 5 colored circles it’s time to add some effects to the whole lot. First, select the “Bright” layer and once again open up it’s “Blending Options…” panel. While in it insert the following settings under the “Outer Glow” tab:

You shal now see that all the circles that’s the contents of the “Bright” layer is showing some glow effects. Time to add some to the “Light” layer as well. So, select the “Light” layer and then open up the “Blending Options…” again and once again enter these settings under it’s “Outer Glow” layer:

With these effects added we now have a first look at what it will look like when it’s done. There are a few more steps to go before we really can enjoy the final result. Here’s how it looks with the effects on it:

Step 7

We have our text all plotted out and with some minor effects on it. Time to add the final touches. Of course we need some flares to make it more believable. This we can achieve with brushes. Using Photoshop’s own “Lens Flare” is not recommended at this stage as it will add a lot of “junk” to our image as far as lens glows and what not. These we do not want. We just want the nice flares.

The sparkle brush I am using I got from a site where you can download 150+ high quality Photoshop brushes for free. You can find the site here: GetBrushes.com

The kind of sparkle you want to use is entirely up to you. I will be working with different to make it look more realistic. Using different colors in the actual flair is also a trick worth trying. Just play around a little with it and you’ll soon understand what I mean. No strong colors just tints of different ones still staying in the almost white region.

After adding all the sparkles and glares that I want the text now look like this:

Step 8

Alright, so what we have now is a pretty nice looking image. But, there is still something missing. And that is the true flares that make you really think this image is believable. So, we’re now going to use Photoshop’s own “Lens Flare” filter.

What we need to do before we do this is to actually pack our layers into one layer. This is called “Merge Layers” and can be found in the “Layer” menu.

BUT, first we want to save our image again as a second setup as we want to have a safety copy of our layered setup. Go ahead and do this before we continue.

After saving your project as a backup, we can now go ahead and “flatten” our image. Select all the layers except the “Color” layer and the “Background” layer. Use the “Merge Layers” function in the “Layers” menu.

You can now go ahead and make the “Color” layer invisible. We won’t need it anymore (you can actually delete it if you want to as we already have it in our backup).

Now, select the layer with our image in it and go to the “Filter” menu. Chose “Filter” -> “Render” -> “Lens Flare“. A window comes up where we can set a few different factors making the flare look a little bit different in each choice. Use these settings:

As you can see we have the brightness on the lowest possible setting as the image is just so little and we don’t want the whole image to be engulfed in flare. But this is perfect. We can really work some magic now. Put flares wherever you feel and make it tasteful. It’s real easy to just add and add stuff and then you realize that it’s way too much.

So, let’s go ahead and add a few of these, more realistic, flares to the mix. Repeat the step over and over. Just choosing “Filter” and then chose the “Lens Flare” in the top of the list is not a good thing. You will only add flare to the exact same position as you last put it. You have to repeat the whole step in order to bring up the window again allowing you reposition the cross to where you want the next flare to go. But hey, it’s just a few more clicks.

After I have added my lens flares the finsihed image now looks like this:

Step 9

The only thing left to do now it actually to save it. In the beginning¨we talked about the possibility to save it as a “.png” file or a regular image. Here we are, at the end of our tutorial, with just that choice. The only thing you have to do now is to make the “Background” layer invisible and you are all good to go saving it as a “.png” making it usable on any background. Great way to make scalable user interfaces.

It’s entire up to you what you want it to be for and how you want to save it.

Round Up

So the “Golden Bling” effect is finished up and ready. Now it’s up to you what you have written. Would love to see what you people did so if you feel like it please comment underneath with a link to your picture and I will be sure to check it out.

I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial and that it will come to good use. There are a ton of cool things you can do with it. Choose a red:ish scale and it will look like a ruby text and so on. Your imagination is the limit here!

There are plenty of other tutorials that you can check out on this website so please go ahead and see if there’s anything that might interest you further.