Leopard text effects

Veerle posted a great tutorial on how to recreate Leopard’s “inset” text effect in Photoshop and Illustrator.

I wanted to offer up alternative way to recreate it in Photshop. Like Veerle’s method, I use layer styles, however instead of using a drop shadow I use a gradient stroke on the text.

Step 1:

Add a layer style to your text layer. In the layer style palette, turn on on the stroke and change the Fill Type from Color to Gradient:

Step 2:

Click on the gradient to bring up the Gradient Editor. Click on the top left slider and change the opacity to zero. Click on the slider right below and change it to white. Press ok.

Now just tweak the opacity of the effect to get what you are looking for.

Sometimes a 2px stroke works better, but often 1px. Also, make the text color a darker shade of the background color that it rests on. I seldom use just black or white. By using something slightly darker, you can really see the stroke effect better.