Adobe Photoshop Tutorials, Tips and Tricks

Text on Fire with Glossy Reflection

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Keywords:	text on fire, flaming text, burning text, glossy surface reflection, special effects
Features Used:	text tool, wind filter, gaussian blur, liquify tool, hue/saturation adjustment, layers, Overlay blending mode, gradient tool, lock transparency, layer styles, drop shadow, inner shadow

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With the middle layer still selected, go to Filter->Liquify. We'll use this to give the flames a wavy look. I set the brush size to 80, density to 11 and pressure to 92. Now take the Warp tool and push the streaks around to get a sort of rising "S" pattern over the letters. Also push a bit around the sides of the letters to show some flames coming from the sides, and don't forget to work around the inside of the "F", "R" and the "E". This step takes a little practice, but it's not too hard. When you're happy with what you see, hit OK. Here's mine:

flaming text effect step 7

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Time for some color. Select Image->Adjustments->Hue/Saturation and select Colorize so we can fiddle with the color. Bring Saturation up to 100 and set Hue to about 40.

burning text effect step 8

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Duplicate this colorized layer and select this duplicate in the layers palette. Select Image->Adjustments->Hue/Saturation again, this time with Colorize off. Set the Hue to -20 to make the flames red. Set the Blending Mode of this duplicate layer to Overlay. Now we've got some nice looking flames:

flaming text step 9

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Next we want to add some color to the top text layer that just has white letters at the moment. So click on the top layer to make it active and click on the Lock Transparency icon above the layer. This protects all the transparent pixels in the layer from changes so we can change the color of the text alone. We'll make the text a gradient from yellow to brown, so set the foreground color to #f9e400 and the background color to #a36a06 (you may vary these). Select the Gradient Tool and swipe a gradient from top to bottom across the letters. Because of the locked transparency, only the text is affected by the gradient tool.

burning text

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A Layer Style will be used next to add more depth to the letters. We'll add a Drop Shadow first using the settings shown below. The color I used in the Blend Mode is a shade of orange #ee6a00.

Don't click OK just yet since we have one more thing to set.

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Now we'll add a red Inner Shadow. I used color #ec0606 for the Blend color.

Click OK. Our burning text effect is looking pretty good at this point:

text on fire special effect step 12

Choose Layer->Merge Visible to collapse all the layers together. You can stop here if the text effect is all you need. But we can also take it further by adding a reflection in the foreground. This is a great way to add more depth and it's quite easy.

Click here to continue with the tutorial to add a reflection.

Thanks for visiting with the Photoshop Dragon.