Photoshop Tutorial: Lighting your text on fire
Jump to: [part 1] [part 2] [part 3] [part 4]
Creating a fire effect on your text is easy. Fire is a powerful effect to add to text because it gives life to whatever you decide to write. It's not just sitting on the page any more. This effect can also be used for interfaces and buttons too.

Level » Beginner
Parts » 4
Time » 10min

 Part 1
The first thing that you want to do is set the background color to black and the foreground color to white. Then create a new image with the following settings:

File -> New
Width: 400px
Height: 400px
Resolution: 72 px/in
Mode: Greyscale
Contents: Background Color


 Part 2

Now it is time to type the text that you will add the effect to. For this example I am using Arial, Bold at 40pt.

After the text is typed in you should rotate the canvas through Image -> Rotate and choose 90 degree CCW.


 Part 3

After you've rotated your text, flatten all the layers:

Layer -> Flaten Image

Now it is time to start adding the effects.

Filter -> Stylize -> Wind; (From the right)

Rotate the canvas back to the original way you had it.

Image -> Rotate and choose 90 degrees CW.

Again add the Wind filter, but this time from the left.

Filter -> Stylize -> Wind; (From the left)

Next we will add some ashes to fly around your fire

Filter -> Noise (Add Noise...), I used about 15% with Gaussian Distribution.

And finally add a ripple effect to add some heat to the fire

Filter -> Distort -> Ripple, (30% medium)


 Part 4
The last thing involved is modifying the colors, our text is just begging for some coloring.

Change the Mode to Indexed Color so that we can set the Color Table

Image -> Mode -> Indexed Color

Adjust the color table

Image -> Mode -> Color Table... (set to Black Body)