In this tutorial, I will be teaching you guys how to make full use of your Photoshop’s layer styles to make your fonts look more enticing - a la your local billboards and magazine advertisement layouts.

Difficulty : Easy
Time to complete : 5-10 minutes

STEP ONE (Optional):

You may skip this step if you do not want to make a magazine header. Create a new document, preferably in portrait mode. For this tutorial, I specifically used (8.5 x 11 inches) but really, it all depends on you. Copy paste a base image for your magazine cover that covers the whole page.

Did you know that the main title text for a magazine or newspaper is called a Masthead? It can also be called simply as a banner or a nameplate.

STEP TWO:
These text effects are the ones used by local Philippine telecom giants Globe and Smart and they really look good in print - provided that you have the eye to pick a decent font.

Look for the ‘T’ or type tool in the toolbar located on the left. Select a font and type the text you want to appear. Place the text wherever you like, you can drag it off by moving your mouse.

STEP THREE:
Here comes the fun part. There are two ways to bring up the layer styles or in this case, the text effects menu.

A.
Look for the ‘f’ button at the bottom of your layers palette. This calls for adding layer styles which you could add.
or
B. Go to Layer -> Layer Styles

STEP FOUR:

A menu will pop out, giving you a lot of various styles you can add to your text and coincidentally, it also can be used for a plethora of elements which you could find once you actually get to tinker more with Photoshop. For the image, I used a white stroke which gives your text a different colored outline - but don’t be limited by this, you could actually use patterns and gradients to fill the stroke and the text itself.

STEP FIVE:

Create a new layer via Layer -> New Layer located at your menu bar, which is on the top. Drag over your layer below the text, as shown here.

STEP SIX:

Here’s a really nifty trick. So you now have a new layer at the bottom of your header text (in this case it’s CRAZY!). Do the following:

Select the ‘Crazy’ text layer
Press CTRL+E which will flatten your text into the layer we originally created.
Bring out the layer styles palette from what you’ve learned above.
Add another additional stroke of a different color/texture

This gives your final product more variety than something very plain and boring. After all, headers are made to be noticed!

Play around with a lot of the styles and you’d be able to wow your friends in no time. Always remember to choose colors that work well with the eye and blends in with the background, or else the actual effect wouldn’t really make much of an impact at all.