The effect of 3D Text is always in demand by designers as it looks cool, attracts the viewer and can be used in any sort of design.

You might be familiar of 3D graphics applications like 3D Studio Max, Maya, Xara 3D etc. These are used to create 3D Text, but they all have some drawbacks. These are complex 3D Softwares, so a normal user finds them difficult to use and navigate with ease. They also need to be procured and installed on your system separately. So why do you need them when you require are less? You can create nice looking 3D effects with Adobe Photoshop.

Although Photoshop is a 2D image editing tool, you can create text that looks like 3D with minimal expertise. In fact, this is exactly what we’re going to focus on and show you in this tutorial.

We will learn to write ‘Chocolate’ in real moulded chocolate. To kick things off, create a new file in Photoshop. We used 530 x 192 pixels for dimensions but this can of course be anything of your choice.

With the text tool, type the text you would like to work on. Select a font with a bold look, it looks better in 3D.

Using a transform mode (Ctrl + T) make the text slanting using the nodes. Use ctrl+drag on the nodes to adjust in perspective mode.

This layer will work as the front of your 3D Text, so now we must create an extruded look. To duplicate the layer, press Shift+Down Arrow to bring the new layer 10 pixels down.

Select the lower layer and press Ctrl+Alt+Up Arrow 9 times. It will create 9 new layers moving each layer up by 1 px. This gives our object a 3D depth look.

To differentiate the first layer and give it a more refined look, we will apply some effects to it. Open the layer effects on the first layer, check ‘Bevel and Emboss’. Use the following settings

Under Bevel and Emboss, also check Contour and use following value

Also give Drop Shadow effect with these values

Your image will now hopefully look something like this

Lets add a reflection effect. Select all the layers below the front text and merge them (Press Ctrl+E). Duplicate the merged layer and give the new layer 20% opacity. Bring down the transparent layer by pressing Shift + Down Arrow for 10 pixels. This will work as a reflection. There are many ways to add a reflection to your text; you can check other tutorials for more advanced reflections.

Almost Done, if you want, you can also add a gradient fill to the background for better presentation!

Might also be worth checking out the 80 best Photoshop Text Effects on the web.

You might find these related posts useful too: