How to create an embossed effect

Designing with an embossed effect is a great way to highlight your creativity. In this short tutorial, see how award-winning artist and illustrator Lidia Lukianova raises her vector drawing using layer styles in Adobe Photoshop.

Lidia Lukianova is an artist and designer with a passion for illustration. Her primary approach is to use an iPad to create illustrations, lettering, and animation.

What you'll need

Get files

Sample files to practice with (ZIP, 7 MB)

Work in layers

Lukianova added a drawing of a tiger head as a new layer to a Photoshop document.

Make it transparent

In order to apply a layer style to her drawing, Lukianova set the Fill to 0 for the tiger layer.

Add some style

The emboss effect is a layer style, so Lukianova clicked the ‘fx’ icon in the Layers panel and chose Bevel & Emboss. You can also double-click a layer to open the Layer Style dialog box.