| Sure, you could take the easy way out and use a plug-in (like
Eyecandy) to add fire effects to your text, but come on. That's so
1996. In this tutorial I'll show you a way to make quality fire
text from scratch. |
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 Start
by opening Photoshop and creating a new grayscale image. Go File»New
and change the mode to grayscale. For this example, I chose dimensions of
400x400 pixels. In the channels palette create a new channel by clicking
the  .
Then use the Text Tool to add white text to your channel. When you are
finished, hit Ctrl+D to deselect your text. To make things easier,
double click your new channel in the channels palette and rename it
"Base."
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 Drag
the "Base" channel to the
to duplicate it. Go to Image»Rotate Canvas»90° CW. Then apply
the wind filter by going to Filter»Stylize»Wind Choose the
settings Blast and From the Left. Reapply the filter
according to how tall you want your flames to be. I used the filter a
total of three times in my example.
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 Now
rotate your text back to normal by going Image»Rotate Canvas»90° CCW.
Soften the streaks by using Filter»Blur»Gaussian Blur Pick a
setting that looks good to you. I chose 3.0 pixels.
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 Lengthen
the flames by going Filter»Blur»Motion Blur Set the distance to
20 pixels and the angle to -79° or so. Then go Filter»Distort»Wave
to add some waviness. I chose these
settings. Next go Filter»Distort»Ocean Ripple to add some
texture to your flame. Set the Ripple Size to 15 and the Ripple Magnitude
to 2.
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 Now
you need to copy the contents of the "Base copy" channel into
Layer 1. This can be accomplished with the following series of impressive
keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+1, Ctrl+V. Now it's time
to colorize the image. Go to Image»Mode»Indexed Color. Then go Image»Mode»Color
Table and choose Black Body. Next switch back to RGB Mode by going Image»Mode»RGB
Color.
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 Now
select the "Base" channel by going to the Channels Palette and
Ctrl+clicking the "Base" channel. Then return to the Layers
Palette and click the
to create a new layer. Fill the selection with black (It can quickly be
done by pressing D followed by Alt+Backspace).
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 As
a final touch you may want to add an inner glow to your text to make it
blend in with the fire a little smoother. Right click on the black text's
layer and choose Blending Options. Then pick Inner Glow and
play with the settings. If you would like to change the color or adjust it
a little, click the background layer (the one with the flames) in the
Layer Palette and explore the Image»Adjust»Hue/Saturation and Image»Adjust»Curves.
You can click the image to the left to see the full view. Whewww, that's
one hot tamale!
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