[Factus]

Let's get right in to it. Pictures will be plentiful since this is short and sweet. You'll be making something similar to this:
Spoiler (Click to View)

Create a new document in Photoshop. Size depends on your personal preference. I'm using 1000x1000 px.
Make sure the background color is transparent. Picture below in case you're confused.
Spoiler (Click to View)

Create a circle of whatever your desired color is. It should fill the entire document. The most practical way to do this is select the ellipse tool by right clicking on the shape tool and selecting the 'Ellipse Tool' option:
Spoiler (Click to View)

With the tool selected click on the canvas and a prompt will appear. Set your height and width to whatever your canvas size is, and check the 'From Center' box.
Spoiler (Click to View)

You should have this. Make sure to rasterize your shape layer by right clicking on the layer and selecting 'Rasterize Layer'.
Spoiler (Click to View)

Now simply type whatever you want. I'll be using the letter "F".
Spoiler (Click to View)

Grab your pen tool and select the vertices/curves of the shape. I started at the bottom-most point of the F. This has to be precise.
Spoiler (Click to View)

Click again with the pen tool wherever you want your shadow to go, like so:
Spoiler (Click to View)

Press the 'esc' button on your keyboard, then do the same to the top. Try to make the two lines parallel to each other, and join them outside of the circle. Press escape again.
Spoiler (Click to View)

Click on either one of the initial points you made and connect it to the other within the shape. You should have a polygonal shape with no holes.
Spoiler (Click to View)

Right click inside the shape, and choose "Make Selection...".
Spoiler (Click to View)

Grab your bucket tool and fill the selection with black on a new layer.
Spoiler (Click to View)

You should have three layers. The black shape/shadow, the text, and the ellipse. Drag the shadow layer below the text layer and change the opacity to somewhere in the 30's.
Spoiler (Click to View)

Select the green ellipse layer, and click on the green shape with your magic wand. Right click on the selection and choose the "Select Inverse" option.
Spoiler (Click to View)

Select the shadow/black shape layer and press ctrl+x. This should remove the shadow outside of the circle. Make sure to save the image as a .png file, as .jpg doesn't support transparency.
Spoiler (Click to View)

That's all, hope this was informative in some way to you. Reply to the post with feedback or questions if you have any.

[Prophett]

Very useful guide for beginners. Nice work!

[Factus]

Very useful guide for beginners. Nice work!

Thank you for the kind words. :)

[Tyre]

Very helpful mate great planning of a tutorial.

[Debit.]

There is a far easier way to do this with Illustrator. :))
Thanks for sharing this tho.

[Luxion]

This is a great tutorial for people who are new to photoshop, great tutorial

[WaterM]

Nice tutorial! It's good for noobs.

[Enbee]

Really good tutorial, thanks for this. I'm trying to get used to PS and this helped me make a good logo and learn some features.

---

Thanks, good tutorial, helped me get better with PS.

[Classicz]

I'd recommend anyone just starting out graphics to following this guide. Teaches you some of the very useful tools in PS.

[Guhkeemaynhe]

Holy shii, I've been looking for a tut like this forever, I just didn't know what to look up. Thanks.

[SIM-3364662]

learned new things trying this, thank you!

[adonix]

Thankyou for properly explaining.

[grzegorz.trentkiewicz]

You can do all steps... but you can use action or plugin for that - better way

[HackersKing]

Nice work bro this is very good tutorial i like it

[Tequinox]

Thanks you for this tutorial !