First decide on the main theme of your flyer and pic a picture that will do the trick. It can be a beach if its a summer party, a swimming pool, a snowed-up mountain, well you get the idea. We will use a city picture for an urban themed flyer.

Start a new project File->New , and set the frame of your flyer to the standard paper size for flyers. Thats 8.5inches in width and 11 inches in height.

Next grab your Paint Bucket Tool and choose black color as background for your new project and create a new layer.

Open your main theme picture if you dont have it open already and by using the Move Tool drug the image into your black flyer.

You will probably notice that the picture does not precisely fit in the flyer’s canvas. To solve this we will resize the image to fit exactly into the canvas. Hit CTRL+T (Command on Mac) or Edit->Free Transform to dynamically resize the image by good ol’ clicking and dragging.

Next rearrange your layers by pulling Layer 1 over Layer 2 on your Layers window.
Now we will blend the two layers by using the Gradient Tool.

First click on the Rectangular Marquee Tool and select the area around the image. Once done choose the Gradient Tool and make sure the colors sequence is from black to white. Hold down Shift and Click and Drag a line from the centre of your canvas half way up creating a straight line.

Once you are happy with the result, go to your layers window and click on the Layer Blending Mode and from the drop down menu choose Multiply and once done merge the two layers (the image and the canvas) into one by hitting Ctrl+E , alternatively link the two layers by clicking on the tick box next to the eye icon of your layers this will bring up a chain do this on both layer and finally click on Layers menu and Merge. This will create a beautiful smooth effect between the two layers.

And you are almost done. What is left is the message of the flyer for which we will use the Type Tool.

The possibilities here are truly endless you may want to use a standard Fonts Format or go for something more extravagant in which case you can consult one of our other tutorials on, 3D typography, Fire text or Burning Neon Effect. The idea is to use the black area of your canvas for your message! So go on be creative and have a great party!

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.

Click any shape you want. Make for instance a circle, remember to hold down shift to make a perfect shaped circle. You can use any colour you want for this tutorial. Once you have this, look in your layer palette, right click the image you created and select “layer transparency”. Create a new layer without deselecting, go to select -> modify -> contract -> contract by 3 pixels.

Now, in select a darker colour than the one you have for your shape (as mentioned, you can use any colour for this one). Now switch to the gradient tool and use gradient to transparent. You can either go up or down over your picture, it’s probably easier and wiser to go up. This will add the volume to the shape you created.

Once you have this, deselect (ctrl+d) - now do the same thing all over again. Right click on the first image, select layer transparency, create a new layer - put this layer on top. Then select the marquee tool, but make sure to use the elliptical marquee tool, the third option is to select “subtract from selection”. This will make sure that it’s going to subtract anything you’re going to select instead of adding it. Then go to Select -> Modify -> Contract by 5 pixels.

To make it smoother, we’ll right click on the selection, while holding the lasso tool - use feather and 10 pixels. Fill this with white (or any brighter colour from the one you chose originally), using the paint bucket as you normally would.

When we have the base for this, we’ll create a new layer - select the elliptical marquee tool again and set white as your foreground colour. Then create a circle on top of your shape. It’s easier to make a circle, but it could really be any shape - oval or so would also work in this example. As the white is the foreground colour, set foreground to transparent using the gradient tool and go from up to down over your shape.

Once we have this done, it’s more or less finished - all we have to do now is link the layer by selecting them and then select “merge linked” from the layers palette.

And that’s it really! You’ve now created a glass effect to your circle.

You can also spice this up by adding a glass reflection. You’d then duplicate the layer and flip it upside down, set the opacity to 50% or so, and then use the erase tool (again using opacity maximum 60%). That’d make the final result look something like this instead.