Step 5: Now you need to run a quick copy paste… you can either hit the copy icon, then the past icon, or use the hotkeys, which are ‘Ctrl-C’ then ‘Ctrl-V’. This will make a copy of your text, but using the background, and it will become your top object.

Step 6: Clear the mask by hitting ‘Ctrl-R’ or clicking the Clear Mask Icon. One the mask is cleared, any additional steps will apply to the entire object rather than just what’s within the mask.

Step 7: Time to start playing with effects to bring out the text from the background. We want it to be blended, not completely invisible! To start, we’ll apply a plastic texture effect to our new object by clicking Effects > Texture > Plastic from the main menu. Here are the settings I used for this tutorial, but feel free to play around. You can really achieve a variety of blending strength by playing with the depth and highlight settings.

I have previews turned on so you can see what the effect looks like before actually applying it.

Step 8: We’ll want to add a slight Emboss to give the text a nice subtle 3D enhancement with shading. You can do this by clicking on Effects > 3D Effects > Emboss from the main menu. Here are the settings I used, but again, play around until you find something you like:

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