Recreate this massive alien-crop-circle effect and write your own name in the beach for all to see. No buldozers needed, just Photoshop.

Hello there and welcome to this week’s tutorial. We will be making our own massive signature in the sand. Open the beach image that we will be working with in this tutorial.

Select “Horizontal Type tool” (the default one), click inside the rectangle and set the following settings:

“Font” to “Verdana”
“Size” to “30pt”
“Color” (Select it from the sand color by using the color picker)

Type “I WAS HERE” or something else that comes to mind 🙂

Choose Edit> Transform> Rotate from the menu and rotate the text a little bit like in the below image:

Select the “Background” layer, hit Shift+Ctrl+N to create a new layer, select the “I WAS HERE” text and hit Ctrl+E to merge down the layers

Now go to Edit> Transform> Skew to transform the text a little bit, like here:

Alrighty, almost done. Let’s go to Layer> Add Vector Mask> Reveal all (a new vector mask will now be created) and double click on the “Vector mask” thumbnail. A layer style dialogue box will open:

Choose “Bevel and Emboss” style from the left

“Depth” to “25%”
“Size” to “5px”
“Soften” to “0px”

Once you’re done with the settings press okay and enjoy your very own signature in the sand. Imagine, all this without even owning a buldozer 😀

Additional ideas:

– play with the opacity of the layer
– play with the new warp tool in CS2
– play with the layer mask to make people inside the signature