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In this Photoshop tutorial, I will show you the process of creating this interesting metro city text effect in Photoshop in just 3 easy steps. We will go through a number of Photoshop functions such as clipping mask and layer blending options to combine several elements such as city buildings, train and bus images together.
This is a beginner level tutorial, have a try!

Note: The Photoshop tutorial is done in CS6 – therefore some screenshot may have slighting different layout as in the earlier version. Some brushes are exclusive to Photoshop CS6.

Here is a preview of the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

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To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stocks:
City Buildings
Train
Bus

Step 1

Create a new document with a dark brown background as shown below: (The size of the canvas doesn’t matter too much here, I used 1280px * 700px)

Load the city image into Photoshop, copy and paste the entire photo onto our document, resize it to fit our canvas size:

Apply the following black and white settings to this city image layer:

Then go to Filter > Brush Strokes > Accented Edges and apply the following settings to the city layer:

Then, change the layer blending mode of this city layer to “Linear Burn”:

and you will have the following effect:

Step 2

We will now work on the text. Type some texts over the previous layers using any bold font (I used the “Impact” font that came with Photoshop):

Apply the following Gradient Overlay for our text layer:

Let’s add the city buildings in – load the image into Photoshop and use the Quick Selection tool to select the buildings:

Copy and paste the selection to our image and apply the following Black and White adjustments:

Change the layer blending mode to “Color Dodge” on this city building layer:

Move the city image to the bottom of the texts and set the layer as clipping mask of the text layer, and you will have the following effect:

Hint: use the free transform tool adjust the city building layer size when necessary.

Repeat the above process and add the train and bus into the top parts of the text:


And here is your effect so far:

Step 3

We’re almost done! For some final touches, we can add some grunge painting around the edges of the texts as shown below: (this can be done using a grunge brushset)

Then we can flatten the image, duplicate the background layer and apply the following “Ink Outlines” filter on the duplicated layer:

Add the following layer mask on this new duplicated layer:

We can further enhance the image brightness and contrast a bit by using the Brightness and Contrast adjustment tool:

I decided to fine-tune the vibrancy a little with the following Vibrance image adjustment tool:

Apply the following layer mask on the vibrance adjustment layer:

and this is my final effect for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

That’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy going through it and find it useful. Drop me a comment below if you have any question.
Till next time, have a great day!