does anyone know how to creat the effect of having lettering on a picture which is transparent so that all that seen is the embosed silloutte of the lettering on the picture

Hi,use Illustrator to build a 3D letter "TRANSPARENT", (inner TRANSPARENT in solid color, outline in shaded black and shadow in black). Paste onto PShop background picture. Use magic wang select solid color and simliar then delete. Or highlight the outer area of "TRANSPARENT" fill in a backgorund color.

If I understand you correctly, you want to leave a shadowed text on a picture. You could do this with a font if you can find one that does this, or 1. type whatever you want on your picture. 2. Duplicate the text layer. Move it to where you like it. (I colored mine blue to differentiate from the first layer.) 3. Ctrl-click on the top text layer to select it's outline, then click on the bottom text layer in the layer channel. Hit delete. This should get rid of the text areas you don't want. Delete the duplicated text layer. It should appear something like the 3rd picture. Good luck!

Hi,use Illustrator to build a 3D letter "TRANSPARENT", (inner TRANSPARENT in solid color, outline in shaded black and shadow in black). Paste onto PShop background picture. Use magic wang select solid color and simliar then delete. Or highlight the outer area of "TRANSPARENT" fill in a backgorund color.

Here's a good one. In Photoshop, type the text. In the Layers box, next to opacity, you see 'Fill'. Change that to ZERO. It will look like the text disapeared. Then go to blending options on that Text Layer (right click on it and choose "Blending Options") and then add a stroke (outline) or whatever you want. If you want some of the text to be visible, go to Color Overlay. Another good thing is in the Blending Options, select Bevel and Emboss > Pillow Emboss.

Actually its not exactly what i wanted but noon the less
you have given me another idea to creat the text in 3d max.regarding my initial question i figured it out-
be creating text using drop shadow and then just reducing the lettering saturation I got the effect ."why didn"t i think of that!" Thanks again

O.K