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How to Add Text to Anything in Photoshop
Ditch the struggle to try and figure out perspective manually! In today's episode, we show you how to use the vanishing point filter to lay text anywhere in a realistic way.
Vanishing Point Filter
After typing the desired text, make sure to copy it onto the clipboard (Cmd+C). This way, when we go into the filter, we can paste it back in (Cmd+V).
To get to the Vanishing Point Filter dialogue, go to Filter -- Vanishing Point. Now, we can define the area that we want for our perspective. After that, the perspective is a breeze. Just drag, drop, and resize the text into the defined area.
Layer Effects
Now that we have the proper perspective, it's important to create layer effects on the text so it looks more realistic. By double clicking on the layer, we can adjust the layer styles. These will change depending on what you want your image to look like. For this episode we choose to give the text a beveled and chiseled look to blend into the stone. We also give the text an inner shadow. Make sure to have the "Use Global Light" box checked in order to keep the light source consistent.
We can adjust the color in the Layer Style Panel as well. We can sample color from the actual image to get a great match.
If things don't look correct right away, don't worry! This process is truly just a lot of playing around with the layer effects to see what looks the most natural.
Adding wear & tear
Often times, text that is placed into an image has a much higher quality resolution and may look too sharp. To create a more realistic and worn look for our text, there are a couple of steps we can take:
Gaussian Blur: Make a duplicate of the layer that holds all of the layer effects (Cmd+J), and then make a new layer and merge those two together (Cmd+E). This strips the layer effects away,. Now we can go to Filter -- Blur -- Gaussian Blur and choose a relatively subtle amount of blurring to help the text appear to be the same quality as the image.
Motion Blur: Duplicate the layer again, then go to Filter -- Blur -- Motion Blur. We can choose an angle and distance that suggests rain has caused the letters to erode. Then, we can create a black layer mask (by holding Opt + clicking on the layer mask button) and paint with white only where we want the "erosion" to show up.
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