LetterPress Effect in Photoshop

Many designers like to create text effects inside Photoshop. Some of these effects are really simple, while others are very complicated to create. You can achieve some amazing results, even with this simple text effects that you can create inside of Photoshop and just a couple of minutes. One of those effects is the letterpress effect. This gives your type the look of being pressed into the paper that it’s printed on. In this tutorial video I’ll show you how to create a letterpress effect in Photoshop in just a couple of minutes.

A lot of text effects are created using a combination of different layer styles and blend modes. While this is often the case, the letterpress effect we are creating today uses none of these. Today’s effect is mostly about selecting the right color choices and stacking your layers properly. The key to this effect is remembering your base color, which is what I recommend that you copy in the video. We reuse this value in order to determine the highlight and shadow value to create this realistic effect.

Letterpress effect in Photoshop

The great thing about this effect is that it works with any color combination. It tends to work better with darker colors, but you can still use it on just about any color combination you can think of. It even works on white and gray. If you wanted to go the extra mile with this affect, you could add a gradient overlay on the dark text color. This would add a subtle variation that may add more realistic depth to your text.

How did your letterpress effect in Photoshop turn out? Did you achieve the sense of realism that you expected? If you ran into any problems, or you have any questions about this effect, feel free to leave them in the comments section below.