Your probably wondering if we are going to put an effect out here that is actually useful.  After all, how often do you really find the need for text made out of blood, slime or chopped lumber.  Well, here is one that may come in handy.  It's called the Extreme Bevels Action, and it uses several different techniques to create different types of bevels, embossings, insets, cutouts, etc.  These techniques have become the staples of web design over the past few years.  You see them in everything from type treatments to interface design to 3D buttons, horizontal rules and bullets.  You name it.

Things to pay attention to in this one are the use of black and white line art to create alpha channels that will be used to make nice clean selections later in the process.  Also, The use of layer effects and the use of filters.  Nothing too fancy here.  This one uses the tried and true work horses of PhotoShop such as Guassian blur and Emboss, with a little bit of Curves for color and some Image Calculations.  If you haven't messed with Image Calculations before, they are well worth the effort.  Before layers and layer effects, image calculations were the only way to create the embossing and shadow effects that we so take for granite now.  I threw one of my favorites into this one.  It's a classic that I learned from Kia's Power Tips called the The Snowy Mask.

Anyway, here we go.

Shown above is the final result of the extreme bevels action.  As with the other actions, you will need to first download the action file here and load it into your PhotoShop Actions Palette.  Next you will need an image with some type.  This action requires a RGB, 72dpi file, white background with black text.  You'll need to reproduce a version of this effect on your own for higher resolutions.  Start off with an image similar to the one I used to create this action.  This way, you will get to see the action work correctly the first time and then you can experiment a bit with other shapes, sizes, text and objects.  I started with an image 10x6 inches, 72dpi with black text.  I used ITC Souvenir, 200 points, tracking -50 and crisp anti-aliasing.  My original (reduced for the Web) is shown here.  Don't use a type face with sharp edges for this one.  The inset behind the text gets softened up a bit and you loose the overall effect.  These actions will also work on a clean scan if you run levels on it to make your background white.  Next highlight Extreme Bevels in the actions palette and click play.

The button above is the results of running the effect on a solid black pill shape.  I added the Home Page text after.  Also, with one slight modification, this action had an interesting effect on the line art shape shown below.

Give it a try.  Pick it apart.  Try some different variations of your own.  Email Us or sign our Guest Book and let us know what you think these.  Also, send us some of your final images or variations.  Have Fun!!