DIY Photoshop Trickery: making any font look like it's carved out of wood!
I am fascinated with the various routes to creating 'faux' textures & surfaces...I used to teach 'Experimental Printmaking' for 5 years in Philly, where we relished re-creating various printmaking processes without a fancy expensive press, using household objects. Picture an imaginary episode of MacGyver, where he attends art school and makes every assignment out of whatever's lying around in the basement. That's what this class was like every week. Anyhow. This theme is a peculiar passion of mine.
So - to create the faux wood-grain look (on anything, really, but i like messing with fonts because they are too clean-looking for their own good, most of the time)
1. Using the TYPE tool, create desired word/phrase/text.
2. Using the MARQUEE tool, create a box around the letters, copy, and paste into a new layer.
3. Center the new layer exactly over the text layer, so they line up.
4. On the top layer, go to FILTERS in the menu bar above, select RENDER, then FIBERS
5. Tinker with the sliders to find ideal randomness of your fiber pattern, click OK, then lighten the opacity of that layer, so below layer shows thru.
6. To get the fibers to show up at the desired level, change opacity also on the bottom (non-fibered) layer; try a light eraser to buff edges & add aging.
*Don't forget to add drop shadows if you want to go all the way with the carved, 3-dimensional look! Wa. La. Trickytricky you.
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