Steel Text Tutorial - Make Chrome Text in Photoshop

It's amazing how realistic a simple graphic can look once it's been adjusted in Photoshop. Take chrome for example. Using nothing but a few quick layer styles, you can create chrome text that begs to be polished. Save the style you create and you can apply it to things other than text, too - put the layer style on a shape, for example, to get a chrome accent on any image you want.

To follow this tutorial you will need a copy of Photoshop. Any version from 7 through the current CS2 will work. It's not necessary to have a picture to put the text on - I've used one in the illustration just to show off how cool the final effect looks in use.

Make Chrome Text

Step One: Open a new canvas sized around 300 x 300 pixels. You can go larger or smaller if you like, but will need to make small adjustments to the settings you use to make the chrome really shine. The canvas needs to be in RGB mode with a white background.

OR - You can open an image that you want to add text to. Make sure it's in RGB mode by clicking "Image", hovering on "Mode", and choosing "RGB".

Step Two: Type some text. The font I'm using is a free font called "Swatch It", but any plain thick font will work. Make sure it's a sans-serif font (meaning that it has no extra curliqueues the way that Times New Roman does), and if it's not fat on its own, make it bold.

Step Three: Access your layer styles by clicking the little "f" icon in the bottom left corner of your Layers Palette, or by clicking "Layer" and choosing "Layer Style".

We're going to apply several settings in the next few steps - don't click OK until the last one.

Our first step is the "Stroke" option. In the Stroke dialogue, apply these settings:

Size: 2 px
    Position: Outside
    Blend Mode: Normal
    Opacity: 100%
    Fill Type: Gradient
    Gradient: Black to Gray
    Tick the "Reverse" box
    Style: Shape Burst
    Tick the "Align with Layer" box
    Angle: 90
    Scale: 100%