Create Seasonal Leafy Text in Photoshop
Tutorials October 15th, 2008Who doesn’t love autumn? With it comes beautiful colors, hayrides, warm sweaters, and leaves, leaves everywhere. I thought I’d help bring in the season with a nice Photoshop text effect that you could use for things like invitation cards, Halloween decorations, or just to get yourself in the right mood for hot chocolate.
Let’s dig in!
Final Result
Here’s what we will be creating today:
Step 1
Create a new document of the dimensions 850×300 pixels. Fill your background layer with white (D to reset colors, and then Ctrl + Backspace to fill with background color), and then grab the Text Tool (T). In the Character Pallete, set the font to Arial, the font size to 130pt, and the font color to #949f37. Click anywhere inside your document, and type the text “Autumn Fun” or whatever text you want. Make sure that your text layer is selected, press Ctrl + A to select the whole document, get the Move Tool (V), and press the Align Vertical and Horizontal Centers buttons in the toolbar:
That will give you this:
Step 2
Now apply these layer styles to the text layer:
Drop Shadow
Gradient Overlay
That will give you the image below:
Step 3
Ok, now we get to the fun part. Open up the Brushes pallet (F5), and select the Scatter Maple Leaves brush like below:
Then, still in the Brushes pallet, set these options:
Brush Tip Shape
Shape Dynamics
Color Dynamics
Other Dynamics
Also make sure that the Scattering option is turned off, and the Smoothing option is turned on.
Save this new brush by clicking on the Create a New Brush button at the bottom of the Brushes pallet. Name the new brush “Maple Leaves” or something similar.
Step 4
To create the leaves underneath the text, you must first set your foreground color to #949f37 - the same color as your text. Right-click on your text layer, and click the Create Work Path option to create a path that you can use to stroke. Create a new layer (Ctrl + Shift + Alt + N), move the new layer underneath the text layer, go to the Paths pallete, and right-click on the new path. Select the “Stroke Path…” option from the menu, select Brush in the dialog that pops up, and uncheck the Simulate Pressure checkbox. Now simply press ok, and you will have some nice leafy text to show off to your friends! This is my result:















October 17th, 2008 at 4:49 am
This is lovely. I did a bit of modification…I repeated Stroke Path and got a very thick hedgy look on the text. Having the text behind the leaves makes it looks like nice lettered hedges.
Great tutorial :D
October 17th, 2008 at 7:00 am
its realy nice thank you anyhow for the creativity
October 17th, 2008 at 11:01 am
@Jason: Thanks! Yes, there are endless ways you can add on to this effect, but I just wanted to give everyone something to work off of. ;)
@abel: I’m glad you liked it!
October 17th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
[...] This tutorial shows you how to create seasonal leafy text in Adobe Photoshop. View Tutorial –> Seasonal Leafy Text Tutorial [...]
October 18th, 2008 at 7:45 am
Nice tutorial. I dig the way you center and align the text in graphic using the Move Tool, I hadn’t seen that before. Thanks! :-)
October 19th, 2008 at 4:03 am
nice tutorial
October 19th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
I really don’t know how to comment here, other than to say that I like the way you use your content….keep up the good work.
October 20th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I have very big problem the used photoshop in filter mune.
October 21st, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Nice blog, I love to see this kind of content, keep up the good work.
November 1st, 2008 at 12:38 pm
I am seaching for some idea to write in my blog… somehow come to your blog. best of luck. Eugene
November 7th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
ew
November 8th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
thats really great tut and nice text effects i really like it
i wish you have more for us
thanks again i will back soon for more lovely tuts like that
November 21st, 2008 at 6:49 am
Sir I like it very much. IT was very nice work and Also a very nice sharing. I Apericiate You…..
December 9th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Great work Josh I really love this text effect, keep up the great work.
December 9th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
@Ptamaro: Yes, I found that feature a few years back, and have used it all the time ever since.
@King Richards: Thanks! I try to keep the content as high quality as I can.
@Gajanan: Huh?
@Hillary Martin: Thanks! It’s always encouraging to hear positive comments from my readers.
@Ghawyy: I hope to have lots more tutorials for you in the future, but I have been kept busy lately by other things so I can’t devote as much attention to this website as I’d like. However, in the near future, I plan on working on a new design and a whole lot of tutorials, so remember to come back!
@Najam Saeed, Michael Stewart, Eugene, Ghawyy, Rvasoya: Thanks for the support!
December 10th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
none of my brushes are working, why? I got the latest edition of photoshop, which means CS3, Need help! :D
Henrik
December 10th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
@Henrik: What do you mean “none of your brushes are working”? Do you mean you just can’t see them, you can’t select them, or they just don’t draw?
Just so you know, the newest version of Photoshop is CS4, but it doesn’t really matter.
December 21st, 2008 at 1:30 pm
my brushes do not work to… i cant select them, they are all locked, what to do?
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:59 pm
@Chris: First, you should obviously make sure that you have the brush tool selected. Second, make sure that you are actually in a document, and that you have an editable layer selected. If you have done all of those things, and it’s still not working, then let me know what exactly your problem is and I’ll try to help out.