______________________________________________________________

This tutorial will teach you how to make a text that looks as if it is located behind a broken glass, which gives a little bit 3D feel to the image. It’s important to emphasize that this effect will only look good when we combine light text against dark background, otherwise, you will not be age to achieve a good result.

So.. make a new canvas of any size you want. We used the #181729 color for our background, but this is of course depends on your design. Arial narrow is our font here, however this is again up to your preference. Remember not to choose fonts with excessive curves because this may prevent us from achieving a nice result.

Select the typing tool and using the white color, type any word. Go to Layer >> Layer Styles >> Options and apply the following settings (by the way, the images are stored on my hosting, only different domain since I first thought pf publishing it on another blog. )

1. Bevel and emboss
2. Gradient #b2b3b7 … >> … #fcfafb
   
3. Stroke Settings

You got a nice and smooth gradient effect, and now duplicate the layer, make sure your duplicated text layer has the same Style settings, this will save you work now. Go to layer styles of your second text layer, and choose the Gradient tab. Change the gradient settings to black … white … black. I suggest to drag the white paint bucket a bit closer to the right side (so that the lightest spot won’t be in the middle, but somewhere at 3/4 towards the top. This is just my personal preference and of course you may choose to keep the white bucket right in the middle. I won’t object, really.
So far, you should achieve this result, and remember, underneath this you have a layer with lighest gradient settings.

________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

Now comes a more complicated part, if it won’t work right from the first try, don’t worry, just try a several times until you will be satisfied with the result. rasterize the upper text layer Using the Lasso Tool, load a chaotic selection that will segment out the upper part of the text. Make sure you don’t cut out too much. Once you like the way your selection looks, press “Del” on your keyboard to delete everything inside the selection. Do the same with the lower part of the text, and be sure, when you press “delete” that the rasterized upper text layer is selected and not the background or the layer underneath it.

On the left you can see an example of what you are supposed to achieve so far.the selection might look a bit dodgy but this is fine, since we are going to achieve a cracked grass effect on top of it. Now, I recommend to zoom on your picture so that it will be much easier for you to work with selections when you can see hem better on your screen. You are going to repeat your previous path, only this time you will select all the remaining area around the text. Using the lasso tool, start from the side of the canvas and when you approach the letters, try to repeat as precise as possible the previous selection path.

You will not be able to follow it exactly, but this is why we want a NEW selection and not just invert the previous one. We don’t want it to look too sleek and polished, it has to have a bit of a cracked charm.

Important: When you selection is ready, make a new layer and drag it in your layers panel so that it will end up being under both text layers. This is very important and not locating the layer in it’s proper position will prevent you from achieving the right result.

Now, select a Brush Tool with master diameter of about 100px and, most important, soft edge. Very gently try to make a “haze” that raises from under the lower edge of the selection. I recommend starting way under your selection and go up bit by bit when you see you want to get more glow.

______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

Repeat te same process with the lower part of the text, loading a selection, more or less following the previous path and then using either a new or the previous glass layer, adding a little white glow. That’s it, this is your result and I hope you like it!

______________________________________________________________