Blinky2004

This is quite a simple effect in reality... although i can hear some wheels turning for those people who don't have a lot of experience with PS just yet.

In the spirit of exploration, i'm only going to provide the basic outline of how this kind of graphic is made; in a point form fashion.

Post any questions/comments/whatever in the "Photoshop General" board folks!

Have fun!
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1) New document, any size you like. I used 300x300 pixels.

2) Add your type. Use what i've used if you just want to learn the techniques first. Rasterize/Render your type layer.

3) EDIT>Transform>Distort. Grab the bottom left corner control handle and drag it down and inward slightly. Then grab the upper right corner handle and drag that inward and down slightly. Try to achieve the type of "distorted zoom" perspective seen in my example above.

4) Press Ctrl/Cmd+J. Then click on the bottom text layer to make it active. Ctrl/Cmd+L. Drag the black OUTPUT slider to 128, and apply. Select the Move tool (V key). Then press Ctrl/Cmd+A. Ctrl/Cmd+H to hide the selection.
Hold the Alt/Opt key down and press your left arrow then your down arrow. Repeat -- left, down, left, down, etc etc... do this until you're happy with the thickness of your type. Then deselect.

Blinky2004

[size=14px] Example images are attached below these instructions. Scroll down. [/size]

5) Add a new layer in between the 2 text layers. Grab the Line tool from the Vector Tools menu. Set it to be 1 pixel, and turn on the "Anti-aliased" option. Also make sure you choose the "Fill Pixels" function. (see attached image)

Start at the top edge of each corner of the black text and draw a line down the edge to the bottom of the grey text. (see attached image) If you zoom in close this is easier to do.
Don't be concerned about drawing outside the text shapes. Just erase the excess afterward.
Lower the Opacity to 25%.

6) Ctrl/Cmd+U. Click the "Colorize" option and setup the colour you want. Adjust the Saturation too if you like. My settings were: HUE=74 SAT=100.

7) Activate the background layer now and press Ctrl/Cmd+L. Drag the white OUTPUT slider over to 128, then apply. Now add some Noise. About 2-2.5 Gaussian/Mono should do fine.

8) Now to add the highlights and shadows to our text.
Before doing this, fill the black text layer with some other colour, temporarily.
Add a new layer and put it right above the coloured text layer. Clip this layer to the coloured text layer by holding down the Alt/Opt key and clicking on the line between the 2 layers. You'll know the upper layer is clipped when it becomes indented in the layer stack.

Using a soft 10-20 pixel brush, paint highlights and shadows on the empty clipped layer. Don't worry about being too perfect. We want the effect to look a little "natural". Use my example as a guide for this if you need to. The light source is at the top left. So this will dictate where your highlights and shadows must go. Set the blend mode to Luminosity, and lower the Opacity to 75%.

Use the Blur tool if needed to smooth out any blunt changes from the white to black.
When you're done the highlights and shadows, fill the top text layer with black again.

9) Hide the top text layer for a minute. Click on the coloured text layer to activate it. Now select ALL, then press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+C (copy merged). Unhide the top text layer now. Click the background layer and press Ctrl/Cmd+V. Move this layer into position just below the original text. Be sure to line up the edge lines to each other.
Apply a 2 pixel Gaussian Blur. Then set the blend mode to Overlay, and lower the Opacity to 50%.

Blinky2004

[size=14px] Example images are attached below these instructions. Scroll down. [/size]

10) Ctrl/Cmd-click the top text layer. Then click on the reflection layer and add a new layer above it. Fill the selection with black and deselect. Drag this layer down until it shows just a little below the coloured text. This is the shadow for our type. We need a proper perspective shadow, so select ALL, Ctrl/Cmd+H to hide selection, pick the Move tool, hold the Alt/Opt key down and press your right arrow key 2x and your down arrow key 1x. Repeat this sequence -- right right, down, right right, down, etc etc. Make the depth of your shadow look similar to the one in my example image. When you're done, deselect.

11) Now to add a soft bevel to our black text. Double-click the black text layer and in the Layer Style window choose "Bevel & Emboss". The "bevel" and "soften" sizes used will depend completely on the size of your type. So try these to start with, and tweak them to suit your own text if needed.
Set the SIZE=16, SOFTEN=16. "Gloss Contour: Rounded Steps". Lower the "highlight mode" to 50% and raise the "shadow mode" to 100%.
Also click in the "Bevel & Emboss: Contour" checkbox.

I've done one other thing to my type for effect. See if you can tell what i've done to add to the look.

I've also done a couple of things to the background layer which help the perspective illusion of the image. Can you figure out what i might have done?

Also... i'm going to leave the "special lighting" effect on the background layer up to you guys to figure out. Trust me, it's very easy. Just go with your instincts on this one.