O.K. this tutorial will explain how to create a clean professional splashscreen for your website and hopefully teach a few usefull techniques that can be used in your future artwork.

alrighty then lets get started:

1.First open a new image 640 x 480 and set the background color to #F3F3F3.

2.Pick a font for your title, this effect works best using a thicker font like impact but you can use whatever you want.

3. Duplicate your textlayer and set the layerstyle to this:

splash-1.png

splash-2.png

splash-3.png

4. Now select the original text layer and set the layerstyle to stroke. (use the default settings)you should have somthing like this:

splash-4.png

5. Merge the both text layers together and then skew (edit -> transform -> skew) so you have somthing like this:

splash-5.png

6. Duplicate the layer and select the original layer.

7. While holding ctrl select the layer in the layers menu and fill it with a dark color I’m using #3F1C00 rename that layer “side” and nudge it 1px down and 1px left.

8. Duplicate “side” and nudge it 1px down and 1px left, repeat this step about 8 times then merge all side layers together.you should have something like this:

splash-6.png

9. Now merge “side” and your text layer and duplicate 2 times give the top layer a dropshadow with these settings:

splash-7.png

10. Select the middle text layer and give it a dropshadow with default settings. now you should have something like this:

splash-8.png

11. Select the bottom text layer edit > transform > flip vertical and move it 1px under the original like this:

splash-9.png

12. Select the rectangular marque tool selct your side copy 2, create a new layer, select you background color as the foreground color and with the gradiant tool add a gradiant 2x from bottom to top about 3 quarters up like this:

splash-10.png

12b: Make sure you have the gradient set to forground to transparent here:

splash_12b.jpg

13. Holding the ctrl button select your new layer then select the bottom text layer and press delete 3 times ,set the opacity to 40 % then you can delete the gradient layer.You should have something like this:

splash-11.png

14. Well thats pretty much it,the rest is up to you, you can either leave it like it is or you can continue adding different effects to it either way I hope I could help put some insight on how to get a nice 3d text effect out of a couple fairly easy steps.

download the PSD here.