The other day I was need of a silver text effect for a little design I was working on. As usual searching Google was the easy way. Problem was the results weren’t very satisfactory. I did find a couple of good results, but both didn’t achieve easily what I wanted. So the solution is to try to recreate a silver text effect in Photoshop by my own. The goal of this tutorial is to achieve that effect using Layer Effects in 7 easy step making the effect easily reusable. This tutorial is very easy to follow and finish.

Step 1

Let’s write our text. I used the word Silver (wonder why…) with the font Impact in 60pt. The color is not important at this stage, I used white so it would be easier to see.

Step 2

In the layers panel, with the type layer selected, add a layer style (it’s the little FX button). First thing we’re adding it’s a drop shadow for a more realist feeling in the end. This step is optional and the settings are changeable on personal taste. The most important is to make sure your shadow isn’t too big or too dark.

Step 3

Let’s add an Inner Glow. Again, settings can be tweaked to suit your likings. Doesn’t have a big impact on the final result.

Step 4

The most important step, the Bevel and Emboss. I used the settings you can see in the picture below. But to achieve that Silver look, the trick is the Gloss Contour.

In the Shading sub-panel click the box with the Glass Contour, next to the Anti-Aliased box (that should be checked by the way), and do something like this:

You should now have something very close to what we want to accomplish.

Step 5

Below the Bevel and Emboss you can find Contour, select it and let’s work it up a bit.

Click the Contour Box, and do a curve like this:

Step 6

This is why the color of the original type didn’t matter, we are adding our Color Overlay. I’ve used #efefef.

Step 7

For the extra little touch, I’m adding a subtle Stroke.

Final

This is what you should get after our 7 steps, or at least something close to this. Take into account you might need to adjust some settings if you want to make your type a lot bigger. Voilá, Silver Text Effect Tutorial in 7 easy steps.

I hope this little tutorial is somehow useful to you. If you liked it, help me promote the post using the buttons below the post tags.

Thanks.