True rusty metal text effect in photoshop
For this effect I’ll use real rust textures because that effect is hard to reproduce in photoshop and it makes no sense to reproduce it if you have real textures. The important part is not the texture itself but the 3D look, lighting and blending modes used to achieve the final effect.
I’ll give you everything you need for this tutorial, including the font used, the textures and the PSD file. In this case the PSD file is a wallpaper where I used this effect to give you an example of where you could use it.
Final result preview
Resources needed:
Text font, rust texture 1, rust texture 2
So I’ll go straight to the effect although I already have a grungy background ready. You can see how I made it if you download the psd file but let’s go to the rusty effect part now.
Video demonstration
Type you text using the Mephisto font that I provided you or other font if you want but you should use a bold one because this effect looks better on bold fonts. I typed the name of a fictional monster. The text size I used is 50px.
Open “rust texture 1″, scale it down to fit the text’s width and paste it as Clipping Mask.
Open “rust texture 2″, scale it down and paste it above the other one also as clipping mask. Apply an Unsharp Mask Filter by going to Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. Use Amount 250 and Radius 0,4. Apply this filter to both textures.
Change the Blending Mode of “rust texture 2″ to Overlay.
Now, this already looks rusty to me but we can make it look so much better…
Double click the text layer on the Layers Palette to open the Layer Style window and apply the following effects:
Drop Shadow
Inner Shadow
Bevel and Emboss
Now it looks a lot better with the 3D effect. At this point you could leave it as it is if you like it but I also added edges because I like it more with edges, like in the image below.
In order to make the edges like in the image above, Ctrl+Click the thumbnail of the text layer on the Layers Palette to select the edges of your text.
When you have the selection around the text, create a new layer above the text and his two clipping mask texture and go to Edit>Stroke. Set Location to Outside and Width 2 – 3 pixels depending on the size of you text and the spaces between the letters.
We are going to use the same steps as for the text to add the “rust texture 2″ as clipping mask on this stroke so you can duplicate the layer with “texture 2″ that you used on the text and paste it here as clipping mask and set Blending Mode to Normal.
The edges look to sharp and flatten so lets make them a bit more 3D too. Open the Layer Styles window for the stroke layer and apply this settings:
Inner Shadow
Bevel and Emboss>Texture
Color Overlay
Well, that’s all it is to it, not extremely difficult, but definitely a real rusty look. Below you have the final result.
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About The Author
Samanta
Hi, i want to thank you for this tutorial because it was very handy for me, it was doing like logo of a medieval/fantasy game and probably without this it would suck hard.
Thank you very much.
Andrei Oprinca
hehe you welcome. I’m happy it was useful for you
Kevin
hi..thanks a lot..this tutorial was very helpful..keep up the good work
Wouter
Thanks for this tutorial, it was very helpful for me,
Thanks a lot.
skaytr
The reason why you would create your own texture when you have a photo is extremely important. For one, unless you have vast amounts of rusty metal in your back yard, before long you will end up repeating what you alraedy used. If you use a stock photo, chances are 1000s of other people have alredy used it. If you create a product for consumers then Copyright also comes into play. No doubt that this is a good way to get a nice effect, but it has absalutly nothing to do wth rust, or any kind of texture. I realise you stated that somewhat in the tutorial and like i said this gets a really nice result, but i do have to say its not that hard to create your own rust texture. it took my 30 minutes to create a realistic rust texture – and the good part about that is you can create the exact look you are going for.
nice tutorial =)
Andrei
I’m glad that you pointed that out but I think that when you work with textures like rust or stuff like that and you use them on objects like text where only a small part of the texture is visible, nobody will know what texture u used. Besides I used a combination of 2 textures using a blend mode.
I agree with you on the copyright part. That can cause you really annoying problems. On the other side, when I made the tutorial I wasn’t thinking on commercial uses.
I do think though, that you can’t replicate the real rust effect without using some textures. I’m sure that more people used the patterns that come with photoshop (which are also real world texture) than these random textures that I found on Internet.
Rop
Thanks really awesome!
Sibl
Great Tutorial!
I was looking for something like that for quite a while now.
Awesome font btw
1000 Thanks, Sibl
Andrei
great. thanx for the comment. I’m glad you liked it
venkat
Thanks really awesome!
Merzmensch
Thank you, this was very helpful and with impressive result!
chipbutty24
Dude! Awesome! Thank you sooo much.
Kate
How do you download the psd file?!
Andrei
Actually, the PSD file cannot be downloaded because I didn’t provide a download link for this particular tutorial
Mandy
Texture number 1 is no longer available, can you please tell me where I can obtain something similar ? I am inspired by this tutorial, it is just great, and I want to have a go, but without texture # 1 I won’t be able to get the effect right !
Andrei Oprinca
Hi Mandy. You can use pretty much any rust texture that you want. You can search on Deviant Art. I changed the link to another texture but you can use any texture that you want.
zakhooi
Has anyone the PSD of this tut for me please?
Great effect!
Amanda
You are awesome! Best tutorial EVER.
faceplanet.net
great stuff many thanks