Photoshop Text Effects: Easy Plastic Text with Layer Styles

Step 4: Choose A Color For Your Text Using The "Color Overlay" Layer Style

Now that we have our text added to the document, we're going to start creating our "plastic" effect, and the first thing we're going to do is choose a better color for it. With the text layer selected, click on the Layer Styles icon at the bottom of the Layers palette:

Choose Color Overlay from the list of Layer Styles that appears:

This brings up the Layer Style dialog box set to the "Color Overlay" options in the middle column. Click on the color swatch to the right of the "Blend Mode" options to choose a new color for your text:

This brings up Photoshop's Color Picker. I'm going to choose a light blue for my text color. Feel free to choose whichever color you prefer, but try to pick a lighter shade of the color:

Click OK when you've chosen your color to exit out of the Color Picker. Your text will now appear in your chosen color in the document:

I should note that we haven't really changed the color of the text here, even though it's now appearing in a different color. Technically, the text is still white. We've simply overlayed a new color onto it using the Color Overlay layer style. If we were to turn off the layer styles, which we won't but if we did, the text would appear white once again.

Step 5: Add An Inner Shadow To The Text Using The "Inner Glow" Layer Style

Next, we're going to give our text more of a three-dimensional look by adding an inner shadow. Now, there is an actual "Inner Shadow" layer style, but we're not going to use it because it's limited to giving us a directional shadow. We want the text to appear to be surrounded by the shadow, so instead of using the ready-made inner shadow that Photoshop gives us, we're going to create our own Inner Shadow layer style by converting the Inner Glow style into a shadow.

To do that, click on the words Inner Glow in the list of Layer Styles on the left of the Layer Style dialog box. Make sure you click directly on the words. Don't simply click inside the checkbox because all that will do is turn on the effect. We want access to the effect's options, and for that, you need to click on the name itself:

The middle column of the Layer Style dialog box will change to show the "Inner Glow" options:

In order to change the "inner glow" to an "inner shadow", all we need to do is change the Blend Mode at the top. Click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the word "Screen" and change the blend mode to Multiply. Our glow is now a shadow, or at least it will be a shadow once we select a darker color for it. The default yellow won't work very well as a shadow, so click on the color swatch directly below the word "Noise", which will bring Photoshop's Color Picker back up, and choose a much darker version of the color you chose for the text. I chose light blue for my text, so I'll choose a dark blue for the shadow. Lower the Opacity of the shadow to around 50% so it's not as intense. Make sure Edge is selected for the Source, and finally, increase the Size of the shadow to about 13 pixels.

Your text will now look something like this: