Create a Glass Text effect in Photoshop and Shatter it

Richie

There are some great effects you can achieve using Ph0toshop and there are so many tutorials on the web to show us how. The most under-appreciated text affect that has long been forgotten is the glass text effect. In this tutorial, we will be creating an amazing looking glass text effect and better yet, we will use the power of the lasso tool and shatter the text into pieces.

We will be learning a lot in this tutorial with respect to the Blending modes and Layer styles. Infact, to achieve the glass text effect, we will experiment with a lot of layer styles which are very much required to get the realistic effect. We will also use a few star brushes created by Brusheezy (I just love their brushes) and give a lens flare effect as well. The background colour combinations have been adopted from PSDTuts, which was the best I could find.

Step 1:

Open Photoshop and create a new file with dimensions 1280 x 800 px. We need to give a nice background gradient, so grab the gradient tool(G) and apply a radial gradient centered around bottom right of the document. The color combinations I used are #2e5b15 —- #103533 —- #090e13.

Step 2:

Now, using the TEXT TOOL (T), type any word of your choice. I typed RICHWORKS using the font ‘Trajan Pro’ . This infact, is one of my favorite font and adapts well to a lot of text effects. I used a bold font style with the text color set to #41a993. Don’t forget to change the Fill opacity in the layers palette to 50%, this is done to get the initial transparency to the text. Also, changing the Fill opacity does not affect the appearance of the Layer styles.

Step 3:

Rasterize the Text layer in the Layers palette and double click on the text layer to open the layer styles window. Now, it is all about experimenting. After doing some meddling with the values, I finally decided to stick to the following settings. Apply the layer styles as shown below.

INNER SHADOW — color #aee8dc

INNER GLOW — color #9ed3c9

BEVEL & EMBOSS :

CONTOUR :

SATIN :

STROKE — #65a49b

Step 4:

Now, the glass effect is ready. Try experimenting with the transparency of each layer style individually to get the desired effect u need. The final image should look something like the one below:

Step 5:

Now comes the shattering of the Glass. This is the most interesting and awesome part of this tutorial. We get to do a lot of stuff depending on our imagination here. OK, First select the LASSO TOOL (L) and make sure the selection type is ‘ADD TO SELECTION’. Follow the image for reference.

Now, start selecting parts of the first letter. This can be achieved by pressing the mouse button at one end of the letter and scratching a few times to the other end(just like you do using a pencil). Use the image below for reference.

Step 6:

Now do this for all the other letters as well. Make sure the scratches are very near to each other and not far away because this will shatter huge chunks of the text which is not desirable. If anything goes wrong, just press CTRL + D to remove the selection and you can start afresh. Finally, you should be getting something like the image below:

Step 7:

Now, pressing CTRL (or Command in MAC) hover across any selection until the a SCISSOR appears on the cursor. This will cut the selected parts of the image and you can move it around. So, Using CTRL, move the selected image slightly up so that the final image ends up something like the one below:

Step 8:

Now, we are half way through. Let us add a bit more realism to the above text. Using the MAGIC WAND TOOL(W) click on any broken piece of the first letter so that a selection appears across it as shown below:

Press CTRL + T to enable the transform tool to be able to manipulate the size and direction of the selected image.

Step 9:

Now, rotate it a little bit holding CTRL (for smoother rotation) and you can also shift the position. Now do this for more of such pieces. The more you do, the better it looks. Here is what I did :

Step 10:

Now head over to Brusheezy and grab their STAR BRUSHES. Now import them into Photoshop. Create a new layer above the text layer and with White as foreground color and using one of those star brushes, click on the edges of certain pieces. use the following image for reference. Try different brushes at different places.

Step 11:

Thats all folks. Today, we learnt how to create a glass text effect and shattered it. I added a cloud layer above the background gradient to give it a hazy look. Click on the image below for a larger view.

Hope you guys enjoyed the tutorial. If you did, Please subscribe to my RSS Feed or Email subscription and Follow me on twitter, I shall follow you too… lol . Good luck and have fun