Pressed text effect with Photoshop and CSS

Pressed text effect, becoming more and popular these days. You can create pressed text effect by two methods: Graphically by using Adobe Photoshop or by using CSS codes. In this article, we will write about how to create pressed text effect with Photoshop (outline only) and by CSS codes.

Where to use CSS and where graphics?

Obviously, you can not use CSS to create a banner or a logo; something that is purely graphical. On the other hand, for pure textual content, you can not use Photoshop. If you look on the sidebar beside, you will see we have used pressed text effect to enhance the texts. This is done via the main stylesheet of WordPress. On the other hand, the text beside the logo in header is a purely graphical content (though CSS could be used for this purpose) and done in Photoshop.

How to create pressed text effect in Photoshop?

We will not go much deeper for the Photoshop part (there are enough good tutorial website for Photoshop). We will give you the outline, using it you can create pressed text effect easily.

In the document in Photoshop, where you want to create the pressed text effect, write the text first after clicking the text icon (T). It is better to use simple looking font than a complex font for this effect. After writing the text, in the Layers tab, right click on the text layer and click blending option. Now, here is the settings that is needed for the pressed text effect:

• Drop Shadow: Opacity around 37%, Angle 90 degree, Distance 1 px, Both spread and size are of 0 px; Blend mode Normal and color white (#FFFFFF).

• Inner shadow: Opacity around 37%, Angle 90 degree, Distance 5 px, Choke 0 px and Size are of 5 px; Blend mode Multiply and color black (#000000).

• Gradient overlay: Select that has both side darker and light in the middle (or create one for your self) in black shade; keep opacity to 29%, Blend mode normal, Style linear and Angle at 90 degree.

We have used a document sheet that of size 650 x 550 pixels; so you may need to adjust for very bigger or very smaller canvus. But, the setting we wrote is almost usable for any normal sized document and it will work on very light to relatively deeper background colors. Here is how it looks with the above settings:

How to create pressed text effect using CSS?

In an previous article, we already wrote about how to create the pressed text effect to highlight any text inside an post. However, this time we are going to show you how to use it in the main stylesheet so that you can use it to stylize the sidebar or any specific part you want. If you read the article, the thing will be clear to you that, pressed text effect works great on a relatively dark background than on plain white background, though it can be created on white background too, but it really does not looks good. Anyway, if you want to add pressed text effect for a particular area, say the Block quote, just add the following in the CSS code of block quote:

text-shadow:#fff 0px 1px 1px;

We gave the pressed text effect using white color (#FFFFFF= #fff = White) of 1 pixel. So, the CSS code should look like this:

So, at the end of this tutorial, you knew both CSS and Photoshop tricks to create the pressed text effect.