The Photoshop plastic effect is a quick way to add three-dimensional style to text, buttons and icons, making them appear like glass or plastic forms that leap off the page. If you want your projects to have a futuristic or ultramodern feel, this is a Photoshop graphics skill you'll want to master.

There are several ways to create plastic effects in Photoshop, but the simplest is to use the various commands under the Layers menu. Text will be used for this example, but you can also rasterize any solid-color shape made with the Rectangle, Ellipse or Polygon tools to create buttons and lozenges.

Applying the Photoshop Plastic Effect
For this example, we'll use white text on a black bacground, but you can use any colors you want. The effect tends to be most dramatic if you use light colors on a dark background.

1. Create a new document with a black background, and type the word "text" in white. It's easiest to see the results if you use a sans-serif font, such as Arial, and a font size of 48 or higher.
2. In the Layer menu under Layer Style, click Color Overlay, then pick a color you like from the selector next to the Blending Mode dropdown. Click OK.
3. Next, apply an Inner Glow from the Layer Style menu. To get the right effect, which should be letters with light centers and darker edge, choose Multiply for the blend mode and use the color picker to choose a darker version of the color you selected in Step 2. Under Elements, make sure the Source is set to edge, then use the size slider to apply the amount of glow that you like. Moving the slider to the extremes will color all of the text, so be sure to keep the effect visibile. Click OK.
4. Now choose Bevel and Emboss from the Layer Style menu. Here we're going to create highlights, so adjust the sliders and contours to create an effect you like. As you're working with this, remember that you're looking at the way light hits your plastic surface. Aim for something that looks natural. Setting the Highlight Mode opacity to 100% and the Shadow Mode opacity to 0 creates the most dramatic effects. Once you're happy with the highlights, click OK.
5. Duplicate the text layer, then select the layer you were previously working on, so that the effects don't get copied to your finished layer.
6. Choose Stroke from the Layer Style menu. By default, this is set to red, but you can change it by clicking on the Color Picker tool under the Fill Type dropdown menu. The quickest way to get a good color is to use the medicine dropper tool, which will appear if you mouse over to your original image. Pick one of the darker colors in your text to select it, then click OK.
7. Go back to Bevel and Emboss and select Stroke Emboss from the Style dropdown menu. Again, the idea is to apply natural-looking highlights, only in this case you're defining the outer edges of your plastic letters, rather than the surface highlights. Adjust the sliders to get a look you like and click OK.
8. Now simply flatten the resulting image to remove the layers, and you've got plastic letters you can save as a JPEG and use for your projects.