Make Your Text Bleed! INK BLEED EFFECT in Photoshop

Let me show you how to create an Ink Bleed effect in Photoshop that I'm sure you'll love. We'll work non-destructively and even create a template so that you can apply this effect to anything. Let's jump right into it. I'll work with a text layer, but you can use any graphic you like. The first step is to create a group. Press Ctrl G on Windows, Command G on the Mac. To stay organized, I'll rename the group and call it Ink Bleed. Next, we'll create a blank layer below the text layer. Here's the trick. If you have a layer selected, you can hold the Ctrl key on Windows, that's the Command key on the Mac, and click on the layer icon to create a new layer below the layer that was currently selected. We're going to fill this layer with white. White is currently my background color. So you can press Ctrl and Backspace on Windows, that's Command Delete on the Mac, to fill with white. Then, I'm going to hold Shift and click on the Ink Bleed effect text layer and right click and select Convert to Smart Object. A smart object is simply a container that can hold one or more layers, and you can apply non-destructive adjustments, distortions, filters, and transformations. In this case, a smart object is very important because we're going to apply a filter, and that filter only works if you have a background with your foreground, and it will also allow us to replace the contents later, making it a template. We'll talk more about that in a moment. But with your smart object selected, you can go into the Filter menu, then go into Pixelate and choose Crystallize. This is the filter that I was talking about just a moment ago. This filter will not work if you have a transparent background. This is why I needed to have a background color so that we could apply this filter. From here, we're going to use a smaller cell size, I would say about 8 in this case, and I'll press OK. And by the way, I would like to point out that these values are relevant to the font size that I'm using. If your text is much larger or much smaller, then the values will not look the same, so you will have to experiment. But you can use my values as a starting point. After applying the crystallized filter, you will see that Photoshop generated this fantastic jagged edge, but it's a bit too jagged, and I would like to smooth it out just a bit. To do so, I'm going to go into the Filter menu, and under Blur, I would choose the Gaussian Blur filter. Blur it enough so that the details are still visible, but you have a bit of a blur. I think that in this case, three pixels works great, and I will press OK. And now we need to sharpen those edges just a bit. To do so, go into Image, Adjustments, and choose Levels. On this window, you can use these sliders to control the sharpness of the edges. I'll click on the black point, and I'll drag it over to the right, right around 70. Then I'll drag the white point and move it to the left at about 105, and this looks pretty good. The edges are still jagged, and that's what I want. I'll press OK. Then we're going to apply the crystallized filter once again, but I'm going to show you a really cool keyword shortcut. Look at the Layers panel. You can see all the smart filters we've added so far, and you can actually duplicate these smart filters simply by holding the Alt key on Windows, that's the Option key on the Mac, and clicking and dragging up, and I'm just going to place it right on top of the Levels adjustment. And as you can see, the crystallized filter is applied once again. You can edit the adjustment simply by double-clicking on the label. The crystallized window will come up again, and I can now increase my cell size just a little bit. We'll go to about 17, that looks pretty good, and I'll press OK. Another really powerful feature with smart filters is that you can fade the effect. Let me show you what I mean by that. Notice this icon to the right of each individual smart filter, this icon right here? When you double-click on it, this window will come up, and this will allow you to fade the effect. In other words, you can reduce the opacity and change the blend mode of this effect. In this case, I'll set the blending mode to Multiply, which will hide the white pixels and only reveal the dark ones. Then I'll set the opacity to 60%, and I'll press OK. And this is the technique that will create the ink bleed effect. I'll duplicate it a few more times to make it look more realistic. Again, you can hold Alt on Windows, Option on the Mac, and click and drag on the smart filter label and release just above the previous one, and as you can see, the effect is applied once again, but we want to make a few adjustments. I'll double-click on the label name. I'll change my cell size to 25, just a bit larger. I'll press OK, but we don't need to worry about the blending mode or the opacity. Multiply and 60% works great. And we'll do it one more time. I'm going to hold Alt on Windows, Option on the Mac, and drag up to duplicate that crystallized filter, and I'll double-click on the label to change the values. I'll increase the cell size to 40, press OK, and this time, I will change the opacity, so I'll click on this icon and bring the opacity down to about 40%. I'll press OK. Now, the effect is looking pretty good, but the lines are a bit too sharp, so we need to soften them a bit, and to do so, we'll use the same technique we used a moment ago. I'm going to go into the Filter menu, then under Blur, I'll select Gaussian Blur. Three pixels worked great last time, so we'll use the same values. I'll just press OK, and I can duplicate the levels adjustment just by holding Alt on Windows, Option on the Mac, and dragging up. In this case, the effect is too strong, but no worries. We can always double-click on the label and reduce it a bit to get the results that we want, so I'll spread these apart until I get a result that looks good to my eye. Something like this should work, and I'll press OK. Now we need to work on blending this effect with the layer below and also adding color. To do so, all you have to do is go into the Blending Mode drop-down and select Multiply, which will hide the white pixels, and as you can see, everything blends great. Now let's add color. Go into the New Adjustment Layer icon and select Hue and Saturation so that you can see that this layer mask is not controlling anything. I'm just going to delete it. You don't have to if you don't want to. Then you can click on this icon to clip it to the layer below, or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl Alt G on Windows, Command Option G on the Mac. This down-pointing arrow is letting us know that this adjustment layer is only controlling the layer directly below it. From the Properties panel, click on the Colorize checkbox. Increase the Lightness so that the color shows through. Increase the Saturation, and then use the Hue to select the color that you want for your ink. In this case, I think the red ink looks pretty cool, and of course, adjust the Saturation and Lightness accordingly. Since we're working with a Smart Object, you can always double-click on it, and it will open up in a new tab, as you can see, and we can make changes to it. For example, I can type PTC for Photoshop Training Channel, and I'll move this over into the center of the canvas. Once I save the Smart Object and go back into my working document, you can see that Photoshop automatically applies this effect to the new text. And you can also drop any other layer in here, such as a logo, hand-drawn art, a photo, or another text layer. And by the way, if you want to learn how to create this beautiful long shadow text effect then, check out this tutorial here. My name is Jesus Ramirez. Thank you so much for watching.