Graffiti Text Effect in Photoshop

Our starting image is a simple brick wall, which you can find in the class folder.

Displacement MapBefore we start with the text, we’re first going to create a displacement map, which will come in handy later on. A displacement map, which is usually a high-contrast black and white version of your image, will help ‘form’ our eventual text to the bricks of this wall so it looks real, not like cartoon bubble letters layered on top of the wall.

First, start by converting your image to black and white. This can quickly be done with the Command + U shortcut. Take the Saturation down to -100. Once the saturation has been drained from the image, raise the contrast by going to Image> Adjustments > Levels to boost the shadows and highlights. Duplicate these settings and click OK.

This will leave you with a high contrast black and white image, which will work great as a displacement map. At this point, you need to save this as a PSD file. It is VERY IMPORTANT that it’s saved as a PSD, otherwise you won’t be able to select it later on.

The TextNow that the displacement map is out of the way, move on to the text. To ensure that you don’t mess up the displacement map, open up your original [color] image again.

The FontYou’re free to use any font that you wish, but to get the ‘graffiti’ feel to your design, it’s recommended that you use a graffiti style font. Over at www.DaFont.com, there’s a font called Zit Graffiti. Feel free to browse for another font you like but it can take a while because there are thousands. The great thing about Zit Graffiti, is that when you type in lowercase letters, the letters are filled in, and when you type in uppercase, you get just an outline. You want your text filled in, so choose the text tool and type your name/word in lower case letters. It should have at least 6 letters.

Usually, graffiti is not only one color. It contains gradients, shadows and borders. This is where Layer Styles come into play. Using Layer Styles can help add all of these elements to a single text layer. The settings used can be found below, but feel free to experiment to get your own result.

Choose the main color of your letters in the foreground color and then go to Layer > Layer Style >Gradient Overlay: Mode Normal, Opacity 100, Linear, Align with layer.

Check the Preview box if you want to see the changes as you go.

Next, put a Stroke around the letters. Try about 9 pixels and choose the color.

The next layer style is an Inner Shadow. Try about 30 for the distance.

And finally, go to Layer > Layer Style > Outer Glow.

Once your Layer Styles are in place, you should be left with something like this:

DisplaceNow that the text is in place, and the colors are set, it’s time to make use of that displacement map created earlier. The Displace filter can be found under the Filter > Distort menu, but before you add any filters, it’s always a good idea to convert your layer into a Smart Object. This will allow you to edit your text and color scheme later if needed. Go to Filter > Convert for Smart Filters

Once the layer has been converted, under the Filter > Distort menu, you’ll find the Displace option.

The Horizontal and Vertical Scale values will control how effective the displacement is. The higher the value, the more distortion is applied to the layer. As we’re not looking for anything drastic, 3 or 4 should work well. Once you press OK, you’ll want to locate the PSD file that you saved earlier.

When the file is selected and opened, you should see a result that similar to the one below. Photoshop used the black and whites of the displacement map to distort the layer, giving the impression that it’s ‘part of the wall’.

Blending InObviously, the text needs to be blended in with the wall. The displacement did a great job at pushing the text away from perfectly straight lines, but now it needs some blending. There are a few ways this can be done, including experimenting with the different Blend Modes, but here is a slightly different way of blending; Blend If.

Blend IfTo access the Blend If controls, go to your Blending Options section within Layer Styles (Layer > Layer Styles > Blending Options).

The Blend If controls, highlighted above, contains two bars. One for the current layer, and one for the layer underneath. Both contain a shadows and highlights slider, which allows you to blend either of the two from the current layer, and/or the layer underneath. In this case, we want to blend the shadows and highlights from the brick wall (underlying layer) with the text.

On the Underlying Layer bar, pulling the shadows slider to the right, and the highlights slider to the left, will blend the current layer with the layer underneath, in this case, the brick wall.

Simply pulling on the sliders will typically give you a very harsh result. Of course, if this is what you’re looking for, then great! However, if you’re looking for a bit more of a blend, the sliders can actually be split. Holding your Alt key will allow you to split each slider, resulting in a much cleaner blend.

The advantage to using Blend If versus Blend Modes, is that you will usually end up with more ‘true’ colors to what you started with. Changing Blend Modes tends to alter the color of your layers in order to blend them in. Of course, experiment to see which method you prefer.

Our finished image looks like a photo of graffiti on a wall and not a Photoshop composite.