Cake Writing
2008 in Techniques
Click the image above for a larger version.
One thing that Adobe Photoshop offers is an unlimited potential for layer styles. There are times when I relax at my computer just by experimenting with styles alone. I’ve seen warnings that other Photoshop gurus have made about how addictive they can be. It’s true! Every word of it! The really great thing about styles is that you can apply them to anything you type or draw with the click of a button, which of course, leads to more experimenting.
Cake Writing is a layer style I happened upon while experimenting one day. I call it Cake Writing because it looks like the gel that you write on Birthday cakes with. I will try to use mainly mouse commands so that there is no key stroke confusion between Mac and Windows systems. If you know shortcuts, that’s great. There are lots of great books on the market that will help you with them. In the meantime, it’s good if you already know something about Photoshop as I’m not going to do alot of explaining of basics.
To create this layer effect with Photoshop 7 follow the procedure outlined below:
1. Open a new document 800 x 600 pixels 72 pixels/inch. Technically, you can use any size or resolution you want, as you will be able to scale the effects later.
2. Change your foreground color to 50% gray. You can choose 50% gray easily. Open the Color palette by choosing Window, Color. Click on the arrow to the right and choose Grayscale Slider. Slide the arrow to 50% or simply type 50% in the box.
3. Create some text. A relaxed cursive font works best with this effect. I’m using Wendy Medium, which is a little thin for this effect. You can use the Faux Bold effect from the text menu to beef up your text temporarily. To do that open the Character palette by choosing Window, Character from the Menu. Click on the little arrow to the right and choose Faux Bold. You will not be able to use the Warp feature if you use Faux Bold, however. There is another way to beef up the thickness of your font which I will show you later.
4. Open the layer styles dialogue box by double-clicking just to the right of the font name in the layers menu. Change the layer style properties from the default to match below:
Blending Options:
Change Fill Opacity to 65% (Fill Opacity is under Advanced Blending)
Drop Shadow:
Change the opacity to 50%
Change the Distance to 1px
Change the Size to 6px
Choose Gaussian contour (if when you click open the contour menu you don’t see the names, click on the small arrow to the right and choose “Small List”)
Place a check mark in the box next to Anti-aliased
Inner Shadow:
Change the Blend Mode to Color Burn
Change the Opacity to 36%
Change the Distance to 7px
Change the Size to 4 px
Choose the Inverted Cone contour
Place a check mark in the box next to Anti-aliased
Inner Glow:
Change the Blend Mode to Multiply
Change the Opacity to 74%
Change the Color to Red 102, Green 102, Blue 102
Change the Size to 1px
Choose the Cone contour
Change the Range to 100%
Bevel and Emboss:
Leave the Style as Inner Bevel
Change the Technique to Chisel Hard
Change the Depth to 1000%
Change the Size to 35px
Change Soften to 1px
Choose the Double-ring Gloss Contour
Place a check mark in the box next to Anti-aliased
Change the Highlight Mode to Screen
Change the Color to White
Change the Opacity to 74%
Change the Shadow Mode to Color Dodge
Change the Color to White
Change the Opacity to 36%
Bevel and Emboss Contour:
Choose the Inverted Cone Contour
Place a check mark in the box next to Anti-aliased
Change the Range to 100%
5. The layer effect is complete. You may need to scale the effect, but we can do that later. For now, lets add some color to see what we’ve got. The best way to add color is add an adjustment layer. Because this effect is a layer effect, we’ll add a gray clipping mask before we adjust the color to make the color a little brighter. To do this, add a layer above the text layer. Fill the layer with 50% gray. Now choose Layer-Group with Previous from the Menu.
6. Add a Hue/Saturation Mask for color by choosing Layer-New Adjustment Layer-Hue/Saturation. Put a check in the box next to Group with Previous Layer and click OK. Put a check in the box next to Colorize (in the lower right-hand corner) and adjust the hue and saturation until you like the effect. Click OK.
7. You can stop here, or you can add Warp to the text so it will look like it’s been written on a birthday cake. To warp the text you will have to turn off the Faux Bold effect, but we can take care of that later. To warp text, click on the text layer to make it active and choose the text tool. The top menu will change to the text menu. To the right of the color box you will find the Warp command. Click to open the Warp Text dialogue box. Choose Arc from the drop down menu and adjust until you’re happy with the effect.
8. To make the text a little thicker, rasterize the text layer (Layer-Rasterize-Type). Then from the Filter menu choose Other-Minimum and set it to a Radius of 1 pixel.
If the effect doesn’t look just the way you want it to, you can try scaling it. Scaling can make dramatic changes in the appearance of a layer effect. To scale effects choose Layer-Layer Style-Scale Effects from the menu. With preview checked use the slider to adjust the effects until you like what you get with your text size and resolution.
