How to Apply Texture to Text in Photoshop

This content originally appeared on Envato Tuts+ Tutorials and was authored by Zap Layden

What You'll Be Creating

Want to learn how to apply texture to text in Photoshop? In this tutorial, we’ll walk through how to fill text with texture, Photoshop style. These techniques would apply to almost any font, as well as shapes. So grab your favorite text and let’s start designing.

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If you love text effects, make sure to check out Envato Elements. There are so many text effect templates you can download and try right now. The best part is, you can download them all for one low price. They’re all included.

But this also includes unlimited textures, photos, fonts, and more. It’s a great choice for a library of professional assets at a bargain price.

What You'll Need

This tutorial uses the following assets:

You can use these files to work along as we explore different approaches to how to apply texture in Photoshop. However, you can also use these text texture techniques and templates with other fonts and other textures. Feel free to work with your own, if you prefer.

Follow along with us over on our Envato Tuts+ YouTube channel:

1. How to Put a Texture on Text in Photoshop

Step 1

Begin by creating a New Document. It can be any size you prefer for your project. In this walkthrough, we’ll be working at 9 inches wide by 6 inches high, at 300 pixels per inch. This could work well for a mini-poster print.

Step 2

Select the Type Tool and then click once on your canvas to begin typing. We’ll use the Somalia font, from Envato Elements, in this example. The text can say anything you prefer, but ours will say “welcome”.

Step 3

Take a look at your Layers panel. If you don’t see this panel, go to Window > Layers to open it up. This is what it looks like at this point in the walkthrough.

Notice how we have our background layer and our text layer. Photoshop automatically created our text layer for us.

Step 4

Next, let’s give this font a texture.

Open up the texture image you’d like to apply to your text, by going to File > Open. We’re going to use a set of Vibrant Watercolor Textures from Envato Elements in this demonstration. It comes with a collection of textures to choose from.

Step 5

With your texture image open, select it all by going Select > All.

Step 6

Then, go to Edit > Copy, to copy the entire image.

Now, return to our original document, where we wrote out our text. Go to Edit > Paste to paste our texture image into this document. You’ll notice that Photoshop automatically pastes it onto a new layer, on top of our text.

Otherwise, if you notice this new layer beneath the text, make sure to click and drag to reposition this layer. We want the texture on top of our text.

Step 7

Looking at your Layers panel, select the layer containing your texture. Right-click on PC or Control-click on Mac. In the resulting menu, select Create Clipping Mask.

The resulting visual looks like this. We only see the texture in the space occupied by our text.

Step 8

The cool thing about this is that we can still move and edit the texture. Let’s demonstrate this by selecting the Move Tool. Then, select the layer containing your texture image. It should still be a Clipping Mask.

Click and drag with the Move Tool selected to easily adjust and move the way the texture is applied to your text.

Step 9

Note that you can also adjust this texture in other ways. For example, you can apply different blending modes to your texture layer.

Let’s try this out by copying our texture layer. You can do this by right-clicking on PC or Control-clicking on Mac and then selecting Duplicate Layer.

Step 10

Next, change this duplicate layer’s Blending Mode to Hard Light, at the top of the Layers panel. Notice how this changes how the layers blend and look together.

Use the Move Tool to reposition this layer, until the textures look and align the way you like.

Step 11

Next, let’s add some Layer Styles to our text layer. You can find this option at the bottom of your Layers panel.

There are many options and possibilities when it comes to Layer Styles. You can add different types of shadows, overlays, and more, to create all kinds of effects. Let’s keep it simple with a basic Color Overlay.

Step 12

With the Layer Styles panel open, choose a purple color like hex code #9019c8, and set the Opacity to 28%. Once you have the values you prefer, click OK to apply them.

Step 13

To finish things up, let’s add some texture to the background. Let’s add one of these Old Paper Textures from Envato Elements to the background.

As we did before, open the image, copy it, and paste it into your document. Then, try lowering the Opacity in the Layers panel to 38%. This will make it look softer and lighter against the existing white background.

Step 14

Let’s repeat this process, but instead with the same Vibrant Watercolor Textures we applied to the text. Open, copy, and paste this texture onto your background.

This time, let’s apply Soft Light as our Blending Mode in our Layers panel. Notice how it adds some soft watercolor elements to our paper texture.

Step 15

Finally, just to add some contrast, let’s add a watercolor brush stroke behind our text. Again, we’re repeating the same process. Open the image, copy the image, and then paste it into your document.

Use the Move Tool to position the brush stroke behind the text. Change the Blending Mode of this layer to Overlay, so it really pops against our background.

As you can see, there are many possibilities you could create by using Blending Modes and Layer Styles. This is just a taste of the possibilities.