plastic font effect

In this Photoshop text effects tutorial, we're going to learn how to use Photoshop's Layer Styles to easily make text look as if it's made out of plastic. To create the effect, we're going to be using some "contours" that we'll be loading in, since they're not readily available to us by default, but don't worry, loading them is easy, and so is everything else we'll be doing.

Here's the effect we're going for:

Let's get started.

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Step 1: Open A New Photoshop Document

The first thing we need to do is open a new document, so let's do that quickly using the keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+N (Win) /Command+N (Mac). This brings up Photoshop's New Document dialog box. Choose whichever size you like. I'm going to use the preset size of 640x480, as circled below:

Adobe Photoshop Text Effects: Create a new Photoshop document.

Step 2: Fill The Document With Black

Press the letter D on your keyboard to reset your Foreground and Background colors, so black becomes your Foreground color andwhite becomes your Background color. Then use the keyboard shortcut Alt+Backspace (Win) / Option+Delete (Mac) to fill your new document with the Foreground color, which in this case is black:

Adobe Photoshop Text Effects: Press "Alt+Backspace" (Win) / "Option+Delete" (Mac) to fill the new document with black.

Step 3: Add Your Text To The Document

Grab your Type tool from the Tools palette, or press T to quickly access it with the keyboard shortcut:

Adobe Photoshop Text Effects: Select the Type tool from Photoshop's Tools palette.

Then, with the Type tool selected, go up to the Options Bar at the top of the screen and select your font. I'm going to use Helvetica Rounded Black for mine. You can choose whichever font you like from the ones you have installed on your system. A larger, thicker font tends to work best for this effect:

Adobe Photoshop Text Effects: Choose your font in the Options Bar.

Press the letter X on your keyboard to swap your Foreground and Background colors, so white becomes your Foreground color. We're going to choose a better color for our text using Layer Styles, but for now, white will do just fine. Then, with your font chosen and white as your Foreground color, click inside your document and add your text. I'm going to type the word "plastic":

Adobe Photoshop Text Effects: Click inside your Photoshop document and add your text.

Resize your text as needed using Photoshop's Free Transform command by pressing Ctrl+T (Win) / Comand+T (Mac), which brings up the Free Transform box and handles around your text. Hold down Shift to constrain your text's proportions and drag any of the corner handles to resize the text. Hold down Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) as well as you drag to force the text to resize from its center point. Press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) when you're happy with the size of your text to accept the change.