How to Create a Quick and Easy Watercolor Text Effect in Photoshop
Watercolor text effects can be quick and easy to create. The number one thing to remember is that your final effect will only look as good as the background texture you use.
This tutorial will teach you how to make an eye-catching, watercolor text effect using a subtle grunge background and Layer Styles in Photoshop. Let's get started.
We're adding a 50% transparent white Color Overlay to lighten our background texture even further. Typically, subtle backgrounds work best for this type of effect.
We're using one of Photoshop's default gradients for our Gradient Overlay simply to add some color variation into our image.
You should have something similar to the image below.
The Outer Glow settings are used to simulate a small amount of paint bleed.
What We'll Be Creating
Click the image below to see the full resolution file.
Step 1
Open a subtle, colored grunge texture in Photoshop and crop it down to 1080x720. We're using a texture from this week's deal, 60 Stunning Colored Grunge Textures. You should have something similar to the image below.
Step 2
Apply the follow Layer Style settings. Our Inner Glow settings are used to add a subtle vignette around the edges of our image.
We're adding a 50% transparent white Color Overlay to lighten our background texture even further. Typically, subtle backgrounds work best for this type of effect.
We're using one of Photoshop's default gradients for our Gradient Overlay simply to add some color variation into our image.
You should have something similar to the image below.
Step 3
Add some large text into your document. We're using the font "Thirsty Rough" from one of our previous deals. If you don't have the same font, you can use another bold, script font as a replacement. Set the Blend Mode of your text layer to Color Burn and the Fill to 60% in the Layers palette. You should have something similar to the image below.
Step 4
Apply the follow Layer Style settings to your text layer. The Inner Glow settings are used to give it a slightly darker edge to simulate how watercolor bleeds into paper.
The Outer Glow settings are used to simulate a small amount of paint bleed.
Final Image
Click the image below to see the full resolution file.