Who doesn’t love autumn?  With it comes beautiful colors, hayrides, warm sweaters, and leaves, leaves everywhere.  I thought I’d help bring in the season with a nice Photoshop text effect that you could use for things like invitation cards, Halloween decorations, or just to get yourself in the right mood for hot chocolate.

Let’s dig in!

Final Result

Here’s what we will be creating today:

Step 1

Create a new document of the dimensions 850×300 pixels.  Fill your background layer with white (D to reset colors, and then Ctrl + Backspace to fill with background color), and then grab the Text Tool (T).  In the Character Pallete, set the font to Arial, the font size to 130pt, and the font color to #949f37.  Click anywhere inside your document, and type the text “Autumn Fun” or whatever text you want.  Make sure that your text layer is selected, press Ctrl + A to select the whole document, get the Move Tool (V), and press the Align Vertical and Horizontal Centers buttons in the toolbar:

That will give you this:

Step 2

Now apply these layer styles to the text layer:

Drop Shadow

Gradient Overlay

That will give you the image below:

Step 3

Ok, now we get to the fun part.  Open up the Brushes pallet (F5), and select the Scatter Maple Leaves brush like below:

Then, still in the Brushes pallet, set these options:

Brush Tip Shape

Shape Dynamics

Color Dynamics

Other Dynamics

Also make sure that the Scattering option is turned off, and the Smoothing option is turned on.

Save this new brush by clicking on the Create a New Brush button at the bottom of the Brushes pallet.  Name the new brush “Maple Leaves” or something similar.

Step 4

To create the leaves underneath the text, you must first set your foreground color to #949f37 – the same color as your text.  Right-click on your text layer, and click the Create Work Path option to create a path that you can use to stroke.  Create a new layer (Ctrl + Shift + Alt + N), move the new layer underneath the text layer, go to the Paths pallete, and right-click on the new path.  Select the “Stroke Path…” option from the menu, select Brush in the dialog that pops up, and uncheck the Simulate Pressure checkbox.  Now simply press ok, and you will have some nice leafy text to show off to your friends!  This is my result: