There are many recurring trends in modern fantasy book covers, but one of the major ones is that everything looks shiny. Bright colors, dramatic lighting, and metallic/sparkle effects abound. But if nowhere else, it is certainly most apparent on the book title. Check out the examples below.
(Quick disclaimer: I did not create these covers and do not take credit for them, they are just examples I found online. They are all beautiful examples of metallic/shiny text on book covers. Click each one to see their Amazon page.)
But how do artists create this metallic text on their book covers? It’s actually a deceptively simple effect in Photoshop. In this post I’ll be walking you through the process.
I’ve opened a new document in Photoshop and created a sample book title based on my upcoming series Daughter of Serpents. (The fonts used, by the way, are Cinzel and Cinzel decorative). This tutorial is beginner-friendly, but if you’ve never used Photoshop before, I recommend checking out this video.
First, if you used multiple text boxes to create your title (which I often do), I highly recommend grouping then in a folder. This will allow you to apply effects to the entire contents of the folder – this is a trick I use often when making covers. I’d also rename it to “Title Text”.
Next, it’s time to add the metallic effect! This is done with a single layer style – the Bevel & Emboss tool. This is what allows you to create a 3D effect on your text.
The Bevel & Emboss Screen will look like this. These are my final settings on my layer to create the metallic effect. I will go through them each below.
Step One: Make sure the top settings are set to “Inner Bevel”, and “Chisel Hard”.
Step Two: Change the Gloss Contour setting to the bottom option, second from left (you can experiment with the other options as well, but this is the easiest way to get the metallic effect).
Step Three: Tweak the Depth, Shade, Soften, and Black/White Opacity layers until you obtain the desired metallic effect. The exact numbers you’ll need will depend on the font you’re using and how metallic you want your text to be. Here is my final settings, using the font Cinzel:
Here is the resulting effect on the text. Remeber, Photoshop is oftentimes not an exact science, and it may take some tweaking of the Bevel & Emboss settings to obtain this exact effect if you’re not using Cinzel as a font.
There are many more settings that can be tweaked to further enhance the effect, but this is the basics of adding a metallic effect to text. Guaranteed to make your book cover really pop!