One of the things I get asked the most is “How did you do that?” Since this blog was started on the very question I felt it was time to do just that.

Today we’ll be going over how I did the main Treasure text on Melvin’s Treasure mini game card.

Fun Medieval Text Tutorial

• Software: Photoshop CS3 or higher
• Skill Level: Novice
• Time: 15-20 minutes

Before we get started you’re going to need Adobe Photoshop. Don’t worry if you don’t have a copy of it yet Adobe gives you a free 30 day trial. Here is a link to start your FREE no obligation trial so you can follow along on my super easy to do tutorial.

Step 1.

Setup a new file inside Photoshop. Name it “fun medieval text”.

Step 2.

Let’s get this image started off with a dark background color. I’m using #311909

I’m going to assume some of us have never used Photoshop before so I will show you how to do this. The rest of you PS pros skip to Step 3.

Step 3.

Find an image of some old, sun stained paper. There are a ton of great free resources for stock images, one of my favorites is http://www.sxc.hu/

Here is the link to download the same piece of paper I use in this tutorial.

We need to add this old paper image into our canvas, to do this click File > Place. A window will popup allowing you to search for the image you want to place in your canvas, once you find your image double left click on it. You will now see the old piece of paper centered perfectly inside our canvas. It should look like the image below if you didn’t skip ahead.

To get rid of the gray crossing lines just hit the ENTER key or right click on the old paper and left click Place.

Step 4.

The font I’m using for this tutorial is called Magic Medieval, you can download it here for free.

Change your Foreground Color to #1d98b9 if you don’t know how to do this please watch the video in Step 2. Select the Horizontal Type Tool and put in whatever text you want, I just typed in the word Treasure.

Duplicate this text layer so we now have 2 of them. You’ll see why we do this later.

Step 5.

Select your top layer and click Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options

Just copy the attributes I’ve given you for each category.

Drop Shadow

Inner Shadow

Outer Glow

Bevel and Emboss

Contour

Satin

Your image should now look like this.

Step 6.

Now that our top text layer is complete we can work on the bottom text layer to make this graphic look like a million bucks.

Select the bottom text layer and click Layer > Layer Styles > Blending Options. Once again just copy my attributes.

Drop Shadow

Your image should now look like this.

The hard work is done now you can lock these two text layers together so you can rotate and move it where ever your heart desires on the canvas.

I hope you found this tutorial useful and I look forward to making more of these for you in the near future. Don’t forget to post a link of your attempt at this tutorial in the comments section below. I’d love to see what you did!

What would you like me to show you on the next “How did you do that?” tutorial?