In this tutorial, I will demonstrate the processes I used to design this snowy rock text effect in Photoshop. The inspiration for this design came from a snowy mountain photo. I thought I could create a similar text effect that might look interesting!

Along the way, we will use various layer blending options, some selection techniques, a number of filter effects and brush dynamics. It’s a simple tutorial suitable for Photoshop beginners. Have a try :)

Here is a preview of my final image for this tutorial: Here is alternative version with some cloud and color effects:

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document sized 800 x 800 px, fill the background layer with Black Color.

Let’s create some lighting effect for the background to work with. Use the Gradient Tool (G) tool and select the Radial Gradient options, Fill the background layer as shown below:

Step 2

Download a copy of this font from dafont.com. Type your text onto the background layer. Re-size (if necessary) and position it in the center of the canvas:

On the text layer, apply the following layer blending options:

Drop Shadow

Inner Shadow

Outer Glow

Inner Glow

Bevel and Emboss

Gradient Overlay

Here is the effect so far:

Step 3

Download a copy of this rock image from cgtextures.com and load it into Photoshop.  In your saved document, load the text layer selection by holding down the Ctrl key and left clicking the thumbnail of the next layer in the layer palette:

Then drag the selection onto the rock image:

Copy and paste the selection back to our text document and name the newly created layer “rock texture”.  You will see the following effect:

Step 4

Duplicate the “rock texture” layer once.  Hide the duplicated layer for now.

Go back to  the original rock texture layer, apply the following Black and White adjustment options:

Change the blending option of this layer to “Screen”.

Un-hide the “rock texture copy” layer, change its blending option to “overlay”. The effect now should look like this:

Step 5

You’ll notice that the white part of the text resembles snow, but we can add some texture to make it look more realistic!

Begin by downloading a copy of this snow image from cgtextures.com and load it into Photoshop.

Go back to our text document and use the same method described in Step 3 to load the text selection. This time we go one step further with the text selection: select the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M), hold down the Alt key and at the same time draw a rectangular selection for the lower part of the text. (We would like to preserve this part of the rock texture and leave the upper part for the snowy effect)

The selection will now look like this:

Hit Alt + Ctrl + D and assign a 10px feather to the selection. Drag this selection onto the snow image we just loaded, copy and paste some snow back to our text document:

If you feel there isn’t enough snow on the text, you can use the Clone Stamp Tool (S) with a small soft brush to clone some more: (Tip: load the selection of the text again, and clone inside the selection so the snow won’t go beyond the text border)

Name this layer as “snow texture” and apply the following Curves adjustment settings:

The effect so far will look like this:

Step 6

To add a bit more dynamic to the text effect, we can simply create a new layer called “falling snow”, grab a 3px soft round brush with the following brush dynamics:

Click the “Smoothing” option.

On the “falling snow”, use this brush to paint around the text layer as shown below:

To add a bit of softness to the falling snow, we can duplicate the “falling snow” layer once and apply the following Gaussian Blur settings:

The effect will now look like this:

There you have it. I added some more rocky texture down the bottom, also did minor adjustment for hue and saturation and alter the angle of the text.

Here is my final image for this tutorial:

Here is alternative version which I added a bit of cloud and color onto it:

You can of course further enhance this text effect by applying some more filter effects, or combining it with some background texture. Try some different options and have fun with it.

Hope you enjoy this tutorial, drop me a comment if you have any question, I will try my best to help you out.

Cheers and have a nice day!