Create an Ancient Typography with Dry Soil Texture and Floral Brushset in Photoshop

n this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create this cool, ancient-style typography using dry soil texture and floral brushset in Photoshop. I will also share with you the technique I learnt for creating some really cool light strips for your image.

Along the way, we will be using a lot of layer blending technqiues, musking, image adjustment tools and adjustment layers, plus the gradient tool and blur tool. This is an intermediate tutorial so beginners may find it a bit tricky. Well, never hurt to have a try!

Here is preview of the final effect: (click to enlarge)

Let’s get started!
To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stocks:
Font
Dry Soil
Floral Brushes
Cloud Brushes

Step 1

Create a new document sized 1000 * 800 px with white background. Create a new layer called “radial gradient” and grab the Gradient Tool (G) and select the radial gradient fill option, fill this layer as shown below:

Step 2

On top of the “Radial Gradient” layer, use the font we have just downloaded, type some text onto it. ( I only typed a letter “A” however you may type whatever text you want)

Apply the following layer blending option to this layer:

Drop Shadow

Inner Glow

Bevel and Emboss

Color Overlay

Gradient Overlay

And you will have the following effect:

Step 3

Load the selection of the text layer by holding down the Ctrl key and left-click the layer thumbnail image on the layer palette:

Hit Ctrl + Alt + R and bring up the Refine Edge Tool, apply the following settings:

Load the “Dry Soil” texture into Photoshop and drag the selection of the text layer (To do this, select the Rectangular Marquee Tool, move your mouse over the selection, left-click and hold to drag):

Copy and paste the selection back to our document, you will have the following effect:

Name this newly-created layer as “dry soil texture” and change its blending mode to “Hard Light” and you will have the following effect:

Step 4

On top of the “dry soil texture” layer, add the following adjustment layers with the respective settings (make sure you tick the “use previous layer as clipping mask” option for all adjustment layers)

Curves

Levels

Color Balance

Bright and Contrast

Black and white

And you will have the following effect:

Step 5

Now I would like to show you an interesting method to add light stripes to the text. Create a new layer on top of all previous layers, grab the rectangular marquee tool to draw a selection as below:

Then grab a big soft brush with white colour (I used 800px) and do a few clicks in the following postition, while maintaining the selection:

Then resize, rotate the selection until it reaches the effect as shown below:

Name this layer as “light strips” and duplicate it a couple of times, move the duplicated layers as shown below:

When you’re happy with the position, merge all those light strips layers and use the Eraser Tool with a soft round brush to erase the bit where covers the text:

Step 5

To add some more decoration to the text, we can use the two brushsets we downloaded and simply do some painting :)

Create a new layer just above the “Radial Light” layer, use the Cloud Brushes to paint some clouds on the bottom part of the canvas:

Create another layer on top of the cloud layer, use the Floral Brushes to add some nice floral swirls around the text:

Step 7
To add some final touches, add two more adjustment layers on top of all other layers: (Don’t tick “use previous layer as clipping mask” this time)

Curves