How to Create Letterpress Typography in Photoshop

This is a beginning lavel design tutorial. In this tutorial i’ll learn you how to create letterpress typography in photoshop. This is very simple and effective tutorial. I hope you will enjoy this tutorial.

Final Preview

This is what we gone do today

final1

Step #1

Open photoshop and create a new document, mine is 550×398px with a white background.

letterpress-step1

Step # 2

Styling the background layer, creat a new layer, name the layer Background gradient

Double-click on the Text layer’s thumbnail in the Layers Panel to open up the Layer Styles dialog box, we will apply a vertical gradiant effect for your background. Then click on the color gradient on the right of the Gradient option to open up the Color Gradient Editor.

letterpress-step2

Double-click on left-color-stop and enter the color value #a9a9a9, then double-click on right-color-stop and enter the color value #e1e1e1

letterpress-step2b

Should look like this.

letterpress-step2-a

Step : 3

Select text tool and type text on front.

letterpress-step3

Now apply some effect

Color Overlay

Double-click on the Text layer’s thumbnail in the Layers Panel to open up the Layer Styles dialog box. First we will apply color overlay, i choose #606060.

letterpress-step4

Inner Shadow

Next apply the inner shadow layer style. Keep the angle at 90o, than changing the values of opacity and Distance. I choose to set the opacity at 75% and distance at 1px.
letterpress-step4-a

Drop Shadow

Finally we will apply the drop shadow, first change the blending option to normal.

Change the shadow color from the default to #ffffff

Keep the angle at 90o, than changing the values of opacity and Distance. I choose to set the opacity at 47% and distance at 1px.

letterpress-step4-b

Final Preview

Finally we have done this tutorial.
final1

Download the source file

If you’d like to check your work, you may download the PSD file for this tutorial

letterpress.rar (File size 22.3 kb)

7 thoughts on “How to Create Letterpress Typography in Photoshop

  1. I recently explored using letterpress for some invitations that I was designing. Needless to say, while it looked beautiful it was well out of our budget. While I took another option, I hope to use this tutorial to at least offer “the look for less.”

  2. Thanks so much for the tutorial. I have been searching all night for the right tutorial. I just could not figure out what type of effect this was and its actual name. Now I know!

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