How to Create a Chrome Text Effect in Affinity Photo

What You’ll Be Creating

In the following tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a chrome text effect in Affinity Photo inspired by a vintage car logo.

If you don’t have the time to learn how to do a chrome text effect, you can always try Envato Elements, where you will find a collection of text effects. These chrome letters are just one of the many resources.

What You’ll Learn in This Affinity Photo Text Effect Tutorial

How to add text in Affinity Photo
How to do a chrome text effect in Affinity Photo
How to work with effects in Affinity Photo
How to create a Mustang text logo
How to create a 3D text in Affinity Photo
How to create a chrome logo in Affinity Photo

Tutorial Assets

You’ll need the following resources in order to complete this project:

Black Sand Typeface

1. How to Create a New Document in Affinity Photo

Launch Affinity Photo and go to File > New to open the New Document window. Type in the dimensions needed whilst keeping the resolution at 72 dpi, the Units to Pixels, and the Color format to RGB. Hit Create.

2. How to Add Text in Affinity Photo

Let’s begin our Mustang text logo by writing the piece of text on the artboard. Grab the Artistic Text Tool (T) and type “Mustang” using the Black Sand font, with a size of 224 pt.

Now, open up the Glyph Browser window by going to Text > Show Glyph Browser. Select only the letters “st” with the Artistic Text Tool (T) and find the corresponding glyph where the two letters are connected. Double-click on it to add it to the text.

Next, select only the letter “g” with the Artistic Text Tool (T) and replace it with the indicated glyph. The piece of text is now ready, so let’s continue with the chrome text effect.

3. How to Do a Chrome Text Effect

Step 1

Let’s find out how Affinity Photo 3D text works and the 3D settings that the application offers.

First, select gray as the fill color of the text. The main way to do a chrome effect in Affinity Photo is to use the 3D layer effect and the Bevel/Emboss layer effect together. To find them, you select the text layer and then go to the Effects panel where you will find a list of all the effects available. If you can’t see the Effects panel, go to View > Studio > Effects. Make sure it is checked.

To get started, first check the small box in front of the 3D effect to activate it; then click on the settings wheel to the right to open up the entire window of settings. There are a lot more settings in there.

Step 2

Here are the 3D settings explained in more detail:

Radius: This setting will influence how deep the effect goes into your font. The value that you are using is specific to the resolution of the document and the size of the text, so you need to experiment with them and see what works best. You can create hundreds of different chrome effect looks.

Radius: 12.2 px

Soften: Makes the effect softer or sharper. Let’s keep it as 0 px for this chrome effect.

Opacity: 100%

Profile: Clicking here you will get six predefined curves that you can choose from. These curve options can decide and basically design the shape of the 3D surface of your font. You can also modify each of these curves by adding more points and moving the curve line in order to create your own unique design. I am using the first curve with an extra point added and moved upwards a little.

Diffuse, Specular, Shininess: These settings are about the quality of the light. If you add multiple light sources (and in 3D effects we usually do), these three settings are universal for all the light sources and you can’t adjust them individually.

Diffuse: 90%
Specular: 80%
Shininess: 90%

Ambient: This is the light that comes from the surroundings. When set to 100%, it gives a very white, blown-out light look, and when set to 0%, it gives the look of a dark room.

Light source: In the beginning, you only have one light source, but you can add more by pressing the Add button or remove a light source by pressing the Remove button. The Direction, Coordinates, and Color settings can be adjusted individually for each light source. Also, you can move around the light point manually, and it will give you different directions from which the light can come in your design. Play around with this to obtain creative results.

Azimuth: 47 degrees
Elevation: 52 degrees
Color: white

Step 3

It is important when working with 3D and creating a chrome effect text that you add multiple light sources in order to obtain a more realistic chrome appearance. To do this, press the Add button, and the application will automatically add the second light. Now, you can set up the coordinates and the color for this light.

Azimuth: -9 degrees
Elevation: 0 degrees
Color: gray R=74, G=74, B=74.

Step 4

We will come back to the 3D effect a bit later but now, we will continue with the Bevel/Emboss effect.

Make sure to check the box in front of the Bevel/Emboss effect in order to activate it. Now, take a look at the settings and feel free to play around with them. I have only changed the Type, Radius and the Direction whilst the rest of the default settings remained the same. This effect will create a thin darker edge on the right side of the text.

Type: Inner
Radius: 1.4 px
Profile: none
Azimuth: 133 degrees
Elevation: 44 degrees

Step 5

The next effect is Inner Shadow, and you can see below the settings used.

Step 6

To create a shadow behind the chrome effect text, we will use the Outer Shadow effect, and you can see the settings used in the following image.

Step 7

Since this chrome text effect is inspired by the Mustang text logo, I decided to go for a bright red background. To make this Affinity Photo text effect more interesting and realistic, we’ll add a third light source which has color in it—specifically the color that comes from the surroundings, so in this case a red color. Use this to give a little bit of the impression that you have light coming from the surroundings and reflecting onto the text.

To achieve this, go back to the 3D effect settings while the text is selected. Press Add in order to add a third light source; then change the direction of the light and set the color to dark red. Leave the rest of the settings as they were set up.

If you decide to use another background, at this stage make sure to sample a color from it and use it instead of the dark red. The color of the light source should match your background of choice.

Azimuth: -52 degrees
Elevation: 0 degrees
Color: red R=100, G=2, B=0.

Step 8

This is what the Affinity Photo 3D text looks like in the end.