How to add a Theater Text Effect - Advance Photoshop Tutorial

This tutorial will go over creating a ‘theater sign’ text, like the SMASH text.

Starting with the font, you’re free to use any font that you wish. I found that a thicker font produced better results, as it allows us more room to place the bulbs. I choose the Streetvertising font, which I found over at DaFont.com, set the Style to Bold and the Size to 300points. Then type your word of choice.

Once your text is typed out, let’s start applying Layer Styles. There are a lot to go through. If you use a larger or smaller font, you may need to tweak the Layer Styles to get the result you’re looking for.
First go to Gradient Overlay and set the Blend Mode to Normal and the opacity set to 100%. Click on the Gradient and Replace the first Color with #af1605 and the second color with #d02f2b. Set the Style at Linear, Turn on the Align with Layer, Set the angle at 90 and scale to 100%.

After the Gradient Overlay, Go to Bavel and Emboss, Set the style to Pillow Emboss, Technique to Smooth, Depth to 100%, Direction to Up, Size set to 5 and the soften set to 0px. Going into shading, set the angle at 90, turn of the Global Light, set the altitude at 20, use a slidy Gloss Contour and turn on the Anti-aliased. Set the Highlight Mode to Screen and the color will be #ab482d, set the opacity to 100%. Set the Shadow Mode to Multiply, set the opacity to 25% and the color will be #600300.

In the Inner Glow, change the Blend Mode to Color Burn, Opacity to 50%, Noise to 0%, Choose a Black color, In the Elements, Set Technique to Softer, Source to Edge, Choke set to 0% and size set to 30px. In the Quality, Turn off the Anti-aliased, set the Range to 60% and the Jitter to 0%.

Then go to Inner Shadow. Change the Blend Mode to Multiply, Color to black, opacity to 30%, Angle set to 130, Turn off the Global Light, set the distance to 10px, Choke to 0%, and the size set to 5px. Don't change anything in the Quality if your values are same as below.

Going into stroke, set the size to 2px, Position to Outside, Blend Mode to Normal, opacity to 100%, Fill type to Color and change the color to #600000.

Once you’re added all the Layer Styles to your text, your result should be looking similar to this:

Now we’re going to create the bulbs, which go inside of the text. With your Ellipse Tool selected, draw out a perfect circle somewhere inside the text.

Once the circle is created, double-click on the color box beside it’s layer, to bring up the color picker for that shape.

We’re looking for a nice orange for the color. (ee8537).

Now let’s start with Layer Styles all over again! You can change the Values as shown in the pictures below.

At this point, we want to duplicate our bulbs throughout each letter. A quick way to do this, is to hold down your Alt key on Windows, Option key on a Mac and drag the bulb to it’s new location. The spacing it completely up to you, but I found that if they are too spaced apart, the light effect isn’t as effective. Once you’ve placed all the bulbs in their spots, you may have something that looks like this:

When you’ve finished all the duplications, the bulbs need some glare! In your Layers Panel, create a New Layer at the top, then grab your Brush Tool. Photoshop has a few handy brushes to help create these types of effects. Under the Brush Picker, click on the arrow at the top right corner, select Assorted Brushes, and append them to your list.

The Starburst brushes will work great for this design.

Initially, you want to use a 50% brush and add a single spot to each bulb, then once you’ve gone through all of them, turn the Opacity back up to 100%, and add a few more spots to select bulbs. Here’s what your result could look like once you go through all the bulbs.

If you have the Extended version of Photoshop, But if you don't have the extended version then no need to step further to add a 3D and your text Effect is completed..

For Extended versions we can go a step further and add a 3D effect to our text. Typically, we’d head up to the 3D menu, and add a Repoussé effect to our type layer. However, I’ve found that, for whatever reason, when turning text with Layer Styles into 3D, some of the Layer Styles get blended in with the extrusion. In this case, we would loose the border.

So instead, right-click on the type layer, and convert it to a Shape.

Now, head up to 3D > Repoussé > Selected Path. When the Repoussé window comes up, the only option we want to adjust is theDepth. Set that at 0.2 and press okay.

Now there are a few things you might notice. The edges are jagged, and the color of the extrusion is ugly. Let’s deal with both of those. Bring up your 3D Panel. Window > 3D.

In the list, under Scene, there are two materials that we want to change. First, find the Extrusion Material, and change the Diffusecolor to the color you want for your border.

Now you may notice a grey border around the text. This is the Front Inflation. Find that material, and change that to a color similar to your text.

Once that’s set, click on Scene at the top of the list, and change the Quality to Ray Traced Final in order for Photoshop to render and smooth out your 3D text.

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Written by Unknown

Unknown is one of the Team Member of Programmer vs Hacker. He has written many articles on this website and is a patner of this website.