In this Photoshop text effects tutorial, we are going to learn how to create a fire text effect, engulfing our letters in burning hot flames. We'll be using Photoshop's powerful Liquify filter for most of the work on the flames themselves, but we'll also be taking a look at the Wind filter, using adjustment layers to colorize the flames, layer styles for adding color to our text, layer masks for blending the flames with the letters, and more.
Here's the result we'll be working towards:
Photoshop fire text: The final "Fire Text" effect.
Let's get started......
Step 01:
Create A New Blank Photoshop Document
Let's begin by creating a new blank Photoshop document. Go up to the File menu at the top of the screen and choose New. Or, for a faster way to create a new document, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+N (Win)/ Command+N (Mac). Either way brings up Photoshop's New Document dialog box. Enter in the dimensions you need for your effect. For this tutorial, I'm going to enter 3 inches for my Width, 3 inches again for my Height, and for the Resolution value. I'll enter 300 pixels/inch. When you're done, click OK to exit out of the dialog box. Your new document will appear on your screen:
Photoshop fire text: Create a new Photoshop document using the New Document dialog box.
Step 02:
Fill The New Document With Black
Since our flaming text probably won't look very impressive against a white background, let's fill our new document with black. For that, we'll use Photoshop's Fill command. Go up to the menu at the top of the screen and choose Fill, or press EditShift+F5 to select the Fill command with the keyboard shortcut:
Photoshop fire text: Go to Edit > Fill.
When the Fill dialog box appears, choose Black for the Contents at the top of the dialog box, which tells Photoshop that we want to use black as our fill color.
Photoshop fire text: Choose Black at the top of the Fill dialog box.
When you are done, click OK in the top right corner of the dialog box to exit out of it. Your document will now be filled with solid black:
Photoshop fire text: The background of the document is now filled with black.
Step 03:
Select The Type Tool
We'll need some text to work with, and for that, we'll need Photoshop's Type Tool. Select it from the Tools palette, or press the letter T on your keyboard to select it with the shortcut:
Photoshop fire text: Select the Type Tool.
Step 04:
Choose A Font
With the Type Tool selected, you'll see that the Options Bar at the top of the screen has changed to show options specifically for the Type Tool. Choose whichever font you'd like to use for the effect. This fire effect tends to work best with serif fonts, so I'm going to choose Times New Roman Bold. Don't worry about the size of the font for now:
Photoshop fire text: Choose a font from the Options Bar.
Step 05:
Set Your Text Color To White
We'll use white as our initial text color, even though we'll be adding more colors later on. To quickly set your text color to white, press the letter D no your keyboard, which resets Photoshop's Foreground and Background colors to their defaults, making your Foreground color black and your Background color white, s we can see by looking at the Foreground and Background color swatches near the bottom of the Tools palette. The Foreground color swatch is the one in the top left. The Background color swatch is on the bottom right:
Photoshop fire text: The Foreground and Background color swatches in the Tools palette.
The text color and Foreground color are one in the same in Photoshop. Changing one also changes the other, which means that in order to change our text color to white, all we need to do is change the Foreground color to white. At the moment, our Background color is set to white, with our Foreground color set to black, exactly the opposite of what we need. To swap them, making white the Foreground color, simply press the letter X on your keyboard. If we look at the two color swatches once again in the Tools palette, we can see that our Foreground color is now set to white:
Photoshop fire text: Press "X" to swap the Foreground and Background colors.
Step 06:
Add Your Text
With the Type Tool selected, a font chosen and your Foreground (Text) color set to white, click inside your document and add your text. I'm going to type the word "FIRE", all in capital letters:
Photoshop fire text: Add your text to the document.
When your are done, click on the check mark in the Options Bar to accept the text and exit out of text editing mode:
Photoshop fire text: Click on the check mark in the Options Bar to accept the text.
Step 07:
Re-size And Move The Text If Needed With Free Transform
My text is a little too small at the moment, so I'm going to re-size it using Photoshop's Free Transform command, which I can also use to move the text. Go up to the Edit menu at the top of the screen and choose Free Transform, or press Ctrl+T (Win)/ Command+T (Mac) to access it with the keyboard shortcut:
Photoshop fire text: Go to Edit > Free Transform.
You'll see the Free Transform box and handles appear around the text in the document. To re-size the text, hold down your Shift key, which will maintain the aspect ratio of the text as you re-size it, then click on any of the corner handles (the little squares) and drag it inward or outward depending on whether you need to make the text smaller or larger. To move the text, click anywhere inside the Free Transform box and drag the text to a new location. I'm going to make my text larger and move it into the bottom center of my document, which is where you'll want to move your text as well. Press Enter (Win)/ Return (Mac) when you're done to accept the transformation and exit out of the Free Transform command:
Photoshop fire text: Re-size and moving the text with Free Transform.
Step 08:
Rasterize The Text
At this point, we have done all we can with our text while it's still text. To continue on with the text steps in our fire effect, we will need to convert our text into pixels, which in Photoshop is known as rasterizing the text. Make sure you have everything spelled correctly before you proceed, since the text will no longer be editable once we have rasterized it. To convert the text into pixels, go up to the Layer menu at the top of the screen, choose Rasterize, and then choose Type:
Photoshop fire text: Go to Layer > Rasterize > Type.
Nothing will seem to have happened to the text in the document, but if we look in the Layers palette, we can see that the text layer, sitting directly above the Background layer, has been converted into a normal, pixel-based layer. We are now essentially working with an image that looks like text rather than actual text, although I'll still refer to it as the text layer to keep things simple as we go along:
Photoshop fire text: The text layer in the Layers palette has been converted into a normal layer.
Step 09:
Duplicate The Text Layer
To create the flames effect, we will need to work on a copy of our text layer, which means we need to duplicate the layer. The easiest way to duplicate a layer in Photoshop is with a keyboard shortcut. First, make sure you have the text layer selected in the Layers palette (selected layers are highlighted in blue), then press Ctrl+J (Win)/ Command+J (Mac). Once again, nothing will seem to have happened in the document itself, but we can see in the Layers palette that we now have a copy of the text layer sitting above the original (the copy has the word "Copy" added to its name):
Photoshop fire text: The Layers palette showing a copy of the text layer directly the original.
Step 10:
Turn The Copy Off For Now
We have duplicated the text layer, but we are actually going to create the main fire effect on the original text layer, saving the copy for later. In fact, we don't even need to see the copy for the moment, so click on the small eyeball icon (officially known as the layer visibility icon) on the far left of the layer in the Layers palette. The eyeball will disappear from the Layers palette, and the layer itself will disappear in the document:
Photoshop fire text: Hide the text copy layer by clicking on the eyeball icon on the left of the layer.
Step 11:
Select The Original Text Layer
With the copy now hidden from view, click on the original text layer in the Layers palette to select it:
Photoshop fire text: Click on the original text layer to select it and make it active.
We are now ready to begin creating the fire text effect itself, which we'll do next!
