Step 1

Make a 500×500 document with a background of your choice (we won’t be using it later anyway). Make a new raster layer and add some text (I am using the letters “ST”) at font size 400 and tracking at -0.080 (or what ever size/tracking that makes your font fill the document). For the text fill, use a paper gradient that comes loaded with Corel Paint Shop Pro.

Step 2

De-select the text selection and go to Effect >Texture Effects and use the following settings:

Now do it again but change it to a brick texture.

Step 3

Duplicate the layer and lower the saturation (Shift+H) to 0.

Step 4

Now edit the curves (Adjust > Brightness & Contrast > Curves) and make a shape like this:

Step 5

Now set the layer blending mode to Overlay:

And you should get this result:

You could stop here if you want to, but there are more steps to make it look more convincing. Merge the overlay layer down to the color layer so you have one background layer and one text lay

er.

Step 7

Now we are going to delete the areas in-between the stone to make them look more like blocks. This might sound confusing, or you might be thinking of something different (bad explaining, sorry) so take a look at the following screenshots to see what I mean.

If you can’t see it click the image to make it bigger. Now you just have to work your way around the image and delete all these areas. Here is my finished result:

Step 8

Go to Effects > 3D effects > Inner Bevel and use these settings:

Step 9

Now for a background add a grunge image on the bottom layer, duplicate it, make it gray (see step 3) and set the blending mode to overlay (Step 5). And you get a rather cool text effect.