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I'm trying to recreate the Captain Planet logo as shown below, but I'm having trouble with the one-point perspective effect on the text.

Logo I'm trying to recreate

My first thought was to use Photoshop's 3D effects, but it's slow, buggy and deprecated anyway. I then thought about a hard drop shadow effect, rasterizing the layer style and the text, then stroking the result, but the drop shadow doesn't do one point perspective, even if it did, if two parts of the shadow overlap, Photoshop treats it as one big area and just draws around the outside.

If all else fails, I'll have to draw it by hand, but 1) I'd like to avoid that and 2) I'm really curious if this can be done in Photoshop using something like filters or effects or transformation tools

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  • Painting by hand is doing it in photoshop! Thogh why you would choose to use photoshop for this beats me.
    – joojaa
    Apr 21, 2022 at 17:24
  • Hi. Welcome to GDSE. I wouldn't draw artwork like this using Photoshop. Think about using vector software instead. The example drawing has almost certainly been drawn by hand (with or without software). I don't think any 3D effects or filters have been used here.
    – Billy Kerr
    Apr 21, 2022 at 17:35
  • Also notice that this isn't just one-point perspective. The depth (z-axis) might be, you can check that by elongating the existing lines and see if they meet in one point. But both texts seem to have been distorted in two different ways before adding the perspective. Looks very deliberately "designed" to me and not entirely "mathematic". Could be mimicked in Illustrator using effects, but the result would be less charming..
    – Wolff
    Apr 21, 2022 at 18:00

1 Answer 1

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This is much easier to accomplish in an actual 3D application, or even in Illustrator. For me, Photoshop would be my last choice. The reality is it's a simple, flat extrusion without any shading or dynamic color - which is why I think Illustrator would actually be easier.

These are merely the basic steps I would use and are not intended to be a comprehensive "tutorial" on how to create the specific image in the question. There are further refinements which would be necessary to complete any final artwork (like the odd lines in the extrusion of the "C" and "P" for example - AI method.) My goal is to merely show the tools or application features used to create similar artwork. Obviously the sample image has some additional distortion applied to the type to create the added perspective skews.

The basics in Photoshop....

  • Set Type
  • Edit > Transform > Warp using Arc with 20% bend
    enter image description here
  • 3D > New 3D Extrusion From Selected Layer
  • Rotate on the Y axis a bit
    enter image description here
  • Increase Extrusion Depth on the Properties Panel
    enter image description here
  • Reduce the Taper setting in the Deform area of the Properties Panel
    enter image description here
    enter image description here
  • Find the Extrusion Material item on the 3D Panel and click it. Then click the color box which appears on the Properties Panel to change the color of the extrusion.
    enter image description here
    enter image description here

From here it's manual labor to add the black lines on the extrusion. (...or I simply don't know enough regarding how to get those in Photoshop.)

Then repeat using similar, but somewhat reversed settings for the bottom word to get it to extrude and arc upward rather than downward.

Using Illustrator....

  • Set Type
  • Object > Envelope Distort > Make with Warp Choosing Arc and a 20% bend
    enter image description here
  • Effect > 3D > 3D Extrude and Bevel
  • Rotate on the Y axis a bit
  • Increase the Perspective setting quite a bit
  • Increase the Extrude Depth setting
  • You probably need to adjust light placement in the More Options area so you can see how it's actually extruding
    enter image description here
  • Set the Surface to No Shading (trust me) and click OK
    enter image description here
  • Choose Object > Expand Appearance
    enter image description here
  • Choose Object > Ungroup 3 times
  • Select the extrusion shapes and change their fill to blue and add a black stroke.
  • Select the character shapes and add a black stroke

enter image description here

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  • Y'know, it never occurred to me to use Illustrator. I've used Photoshop for almost 20 years, but barely touched Illustrator, except for one logo I designed about 10 years ago. This is a reminder for me to open it up and start learning again. I guess I also didn't know that Illustrator could do stuff like this easily. Thanks for the amazing answer. Very clear and answers my question!
    – Grayda
    Apr 23, 2022 at 2:00

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