In this typography based tutorial, I’ll show you how to create the effect of a triple stroke on a piece of text. Unlike Adobe Illustrator, where you can apply multiple strokes, Photoshop only allows you to add one stroke on any particular layer. In this case, we’ll use a gradient trick to apply this effect. The good thing here is that the text remains fully editable after the effect has been applied.
1. Create a new Photoshop document with a white background.
2. Select the Type tool from the tool bar and add some text. I used Centruy Gothic, bold style, size of 72 and tracking (spaces between the letters) of 100.
3. Double-click on the text layer to open up the Layer Style dialog box. Click on the word “Stroke” on the bottom left. Set the size to 10 px and set the Fill Type to Gradient. Don’t click OK yet.
4. Click on the Gradient dropdown box and choose the Black, White gradient.
5. Still in the Gradient Editor click on the Black Color Stop, then in the Location field type in 33%.
6. Click on the White Color Stop and in the Location field type 33%.
7. Click to the right of the white color stop to add a new one. The new color stop should be white by default. If it is not white, just double click on it to open the color picker to choose white.
Type 66% in the Location box.
8. Click once more to the right of the second white color stop. Double click on the new color stop and set the color to dark red #990000. Set the Location to 66%.
OK so that’s the special gradient created. You’ve removed the smooth transition from one color to the other producing three solid blocks of color which will make up the strokes.
Click OK.
9. Now back on the Layer Style dialog box, set the Style to Shape Burst. You will be able to see all of these changes on your initial text.
When you’re happy with how your text looks, click OK.
As I mentioned earlier, the text is fully editable so you can add more type and it will keep the layer style. Also by changing the color of your original text you can get some nice effects. For example, my original text was black, if I go back and change it to white, it looks like this.
You can also get some interesting effects by going back to the Stroke style and changing the thickness of the stroke. Here the stroke is 5 pixels with red type.
You can always go back to the Gradient Editor inside the Stroke effect and change or add color stops as in the steps 5 – 8 to get a wide variety of effects.
