A lot of people asks how to do metal text in photoshop and really, it can be exhausting if you dont know where
to start. Some people want you to use this or that plugin to create it, but really, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Photoshop in itself has a lot of tools that people tend to overlook, and one of these is “Layer Styles”. Here I
will show you how to create a pretty nice metal effect with only photoshop layer styles.
Lets fire up photoshop and create a new image.
When we have a new image, lets write some text. You will get a better result with a blocky, fat text then with
something thin. In this example, I am using a free font that is named Crown Title wich you can find at
1001freefonts.com and the result looks like this:
(To all you messerschmidts out there, i know there are 2 ‘s there .. i wrote it in swedish not thinking I was gonna
write the tutorial in english.)
Now, we have the text and its time to add the layer styles that actually create the metal effect seen in the first picture.
You find “Layer Styles” in the “Layer” menu, and the first style that we will apply is “Drop Shadow”, so select that and enter the following settings:
After that, we need to add the gradient that gives it that metal “shine” and the one to select is “Gradient Overlay” in the layer styles. Note that you dont have to close the layer style dialogue in between setting the different styles. Here are the gradient settings: 
And here are the color setting for the actual gradient:
The gray color has a hex value of #A6A6A6.
And last, but not least, we need to add “Stroke” and here are the settings for the Stroke in the text I made:
When you press OK now, your text should turn into a nice silvery text that can be used just about anywhere. Good times will follow.
