Carving into a tree - need a little help

[primespcts]

So I am trying to take an image of a tree trunk (or a school desk, or a wooden door) and "carve" a heart with some people's names into it and make it look somewhat realistic, as if they carved their names into it themselves. I am not completely new to photoshop, I can find my way around and have edited several other projects. I am, however, completely stumped on how to do this one. Please help! Let me know if you need any more info.

 

[Jackhammer56]

Tree Carving

I'm not quite sure about the look you are going for but here is a suggestion.

Take your tree and above it, create a new layer.
Take your brush tool and find a very soft (0 hardness) round tip.
Change your color swatch in the color picker to a rich brown.
Zoom in the on the trunk and use an appropriate sized round brush tip.
Write whatever.
Go to the layers palette and change the mode to multiply.
This will make it look like it's part of the tree.
Also, you will probably need to adjust the opacity either now or after the next step.
You may want to go back to the tree layer and use the smudge tool (go lightly with pressure) and even-out the bark. This may give it a little more carved look.
Good luck

 

[mquis]

use the warp tool if you are going to do it on a tree.
A good base is to write the text, lower the fill to 0% and then use inner shadows