Tutorial: Monogram Letter in Photoshop

Monogram letters seem to be very popular in the paper scrapping world. This tutorial will show you how to make a monogram alpha letter from a digital patterned paper.

First you will want to pick out a Font that is a little chunky and cool looking. My example I am using font called Pharmacy (by Harold Lohner). Open up a transparent document at least 5inches by 7 inches.

Set your font size to about 300.

Type out your letter. This is what your layers palette will look like.

Now rasterize your letter, right click on the layer and select "Rasterize Type".

Open up the digital patterned paper you want to make your monogram letter out of.

Drag your rasterized letter onto the patterned paper. With the layer highlighted, click on Select > Load Selection

Click on OK to select the letter, this will put marching ants around your letter.

Click on your background later to select it.

Double Click on the background layer. Click OK to change the background layer into layer 0.

Click Edit > Copy. The letter A is now copied and ready to be pasted into a new layer. Edit > Paste to do this.

Now draw the layer 0 and top letter A layer into the trash can. You are left with a patterned paper monogram letter. Now the fun begins. Zoom in a litter closer to get a better look at your letter. You may now want to add a slight bevel and drop shadow to the letter to make it more 3D looking.

Click on the Little F at the bottom of the layers palette -

Click on bevel and emboss- adjust to your liking. Then add a slight drop shadow that looks real.

Add a new layer by clicking on the little folder paper at the bottom of the layers palette.

Layer > Merge Visible to merge the two layers together.

Now that you again only have one layer, add a colored stroke around your letter to make it look like it is matted. Again, do this by clicking on the little F on the bottom of the layers pallette.

The layers Style dialog box will appear. Click in the stoke color box and use your eyedropper to select the color you would like the matt to be.

These are the settings I used in my example.

Next add a slight drop shadow and you are finished.