How creative can you get with fonts and typography? There are so many tutorials on Creating awesome typography on the web, so this might seem a little bit redundant. As a matter of fact, I wanted to get ideas on how to create a unique style of typeface, so i decided to search for a few which had this uniqueness compared to all others and I stumbled upon a rather impressive set of fonts. Graphic river have released one of their new fonts, a textile lettered font, which immediately caught my eye. I wanted to create something similar to the typeface so i experimented a little bit and came up with this tutorial. Hope you guys like it.

I think one of the best features of Photoshop is the Layer Styles. We can create all sorts of effects like plastic, glass, water, ice, metal, and blend text with various textures. In this tutorial, I will show you how to create a denim textured typography with stitches. I will use only Layer Styles, and once our new style is created, we will be able to save the style and apply it wherever we want.

Step 1 :

Open Photoshop and create a new file with size 500 x 500px and fill it with light gray.

Step 2:

Now, select the Type tool(T) and Type the letter ‘R’ or anything that you like. I used the font known as ‘ROCKWELL‘. You might as well use any other. It doesn’t really matter. Just use a font which has the least bends and curves. You will know why later :)

Step 3:

Now, right click on the Text layer on the layers palette and click on ‘Rasterize layer’ option. Now, CTRL + Click the text layer so that it gets selected(marquee selection). Now go to SELECT >> MODIFY >> CONTRACT and set the value as 8 pixels.

Step 4:

Now Click on the rectangular marquee tool and right click on the image(the selection) and select ‘MAKE WORK PATH’. You will notice the marquee lines became a path.

Step 5:

Now Click on the brush tool and use a 50% hard round/soft brush with settings as shown below.

Step 6:

Create a NEW LAYER by going to LAYER >> NEW LAYER. Change the foreground color to WHITE. Now, select the PEN TOOL and right click on the path and select ‘STROKE PATH’. Use the Brush as the option and DO NOT TICK  ‘Simulate pressure’.

Now you will notice the path has been converted to a thick line with the brush we just selected.

Step 7:

Now, to make the stitches. There are actually 2 ways to create the stitch effect. You can either define a new brush preset and apply over the work path with some shape dynamics modified. Or you can use an eraser on the above image and get the effect. I chose the latter because I wasn’t quite satisfied with the former one. If you have a suggestion, please feel free to make one.

Make sure, the white line has been created on a new layer. OK, Now Select the Eraser Tool and start erasing parts of the line in the direction perpendicular to the path. I hope its not that difficult to understand :D

You should be getting an image similar to the one below:

Step 7:

Now for the texture. I used a texture of denim from Filter Foger that I found here. I have uploaded so that you can directly download the image.

Step 8:

Paste the above image in your document above the TEXT layer but below the Stitches layer. So, it must something like this:

Step 9:

Now, Select the denim texture layer and ALT + CLICK on the border of the denim layer and texture layer to create a Clipping mask. Use the image below as reference.

Step 10:

Now, Select the BURN Tool and click on the Denim layer and using a soft brush with a radius of 50 px or so, burn the borders of the image so that it appears dark and realistic. Use the below image as reference

Step 11:

Now comes the interesting part. It is always fun to experiment. Let us make the letter even more bold and realistic. Create a new GROUP and name it ‘R’ and select all the layers from the layers palette, except the background layer and drag and drop them into the group. Now, convert the group into a SMART OBJECT by right clicking on the group and clicking on ‘Convert to smart object’. This gives a lot of flexibility to the group if you want to meddle with it later.

Double click on the smart layer and apply the following layer styles.

Step 12:

Well, that’s  it. The final image must look something like this:

Step 13:

Now if you want, you can also add a background texture. I used this stock image of a ‘Jute Bag’. Go and grab it and paste it below the smart object and your typography is ready.

Hope you guys liked the tutorial. If you think, there were ways I could have optmised some steps, Please let me know. I shall appreciate and change if necessary. Good Luck.

Here is the final version of the image I created.

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