Steel Text Tutorial - Make Chrome Text in Photoshop

It's amazing how realistic a simple graphic can look once it's been adjusted in Photoshop. Take chrome for example. Using nothing but a few quick layer styles, you can create chrome text that begs to be polished. Save the style you create and you can apply it to things other than text, too - put the layer style on a shape, for example, to get a chrome accent on any image you want.

To follow this tutorial you will need a copy of Photoshop. Any version from 7 through the current CS2 will work. It's not necessary to have a picture to put the text on - I've used one in the illustration just to show off how cool the final effect looks in use.

Make Chrome Text

Step One: Open a new canvas sized around 300 x 300 pixels. You can go larger or smaller if you like, but will need to make small adjustments to the settings you use to make the chrome really shine. The canvas needs to be in RGB mode with a white background.

OR - You can open an image that you want to add text to. Make sure it's in RGB mode by clicking "Image", hovering on "Mode", and choosing "RGB".

Step Two: Type some text. The font I'm using is a free font called "Swatch It", but any plain thick font will work. Make sure it's a sans-serif font (meaning that it has no extra curliqueues the way that Times New Roman does), and if it's not fat on its own, make it bold.

Step Three: Access your layer styles by clicking the little "f" icon in the bottom left corner of your Layers Palette, or by clicking "Layer" and choosing "Layer Style".

We're going to apply several settings in the next few steps - don't click OK until the last one.

Our first step is the "Stroke" option. In the Stroke dialogue, apply these settings:

Size: 2 px
Position: Outside
Blend Mode: Normal
Opacity: 100%
Fill Type: Gradient
Gradient: Black to Gray
Tick the "Reverse" box
Style: Shape Burst
Tick the "Align with Layer" box
Angle: 90
Scale: 100%

Step Four: Our next layer style is Gradient Overlay. In the Gradient Overlay dialogue, apply these settings:

Blend Mode: Normal
Opacity: 100%
Gradient: Black to White
Style: Linear
Tick the "Align with Layer" box
Angle: 90
Scale: 150%

Step Five: The next layer style to apply is "Color Overlay". Apply these settings:
Blend Mode: Overlay
Color: #9b9b9b
Opacity: 96%

Step Six: Now we get to move on to the "Satin" setting. In the "Satin" dialogue, apply these options:

Blend Mode: Screen
Color: White
Opacity: 100%
Angle: 90
Distance: 20 px
Size: 75 px
Contour: Spiked wave

Step Seven: Moving right along, we go to the "Bevel and Emboss" dialogue. Apply the following settings:

Style: Inner Bevel
Technique: Smooth
Depth: 100%
Direction: Up
Size: 6 px
Soften: 0 px
Angle: 90
Altitude: 30
Gloss Contour: Double Spike
Highlight Mode: Screen (white)
Opacity: 75%
Shadow Mode: Multiply (black)
Opacity: 40%

Step Eight: I promise, we're getting closer - but you gotta admit, it's looking fantastic, right? Now we go to "Inner Shadow" and apply these settings:

Blend Mode: Screen
Color: White
Opacity: 100%
Angle: 90
Distance: 3 px
Choke: 0%
Size: 6 px
Contour: Ramp

Step Nine: This is our last setting (yay!) - go to the "Drop Shadow" dialogue and put in these settings:

Blend Mode: Multiply
Color: Black
Opacity: 65%
Angle: 90
Distance: 6 px
Spread: 29%
Size: 7 px
Contour: Waving Ramp
Noise: 0%
Tick the "Layer Knocks Out Drop Shadow" box

Click OK and you have a really fantastic chrome text style!