Creating a Blazing Flame Text in Photoshop
By Dr Diablo | Photoshop CS3 | BeginnerThis tutorial is going to teach you how to create a blazing flame text effect in Photoshop using the Smudge Tool and multiple filters such as Wave Distort and various Blur operations. The grayscale text is colored using the Indexed Image Mode's, Black Body, and color table. Your final results will look something like this.
Our tutorial will be divided into two main parts, first we will create the special blaze effect using the Smudge Tool and some blur filters. We will then colour our text using a Color Table.
Creating the Special Blaze Effects
Start off by creating a new document in Photoshop with the following properties.
Set your Foreground Color to #FFFFFF White and Background Color to #000000 Black. Press Ctrl + Backspace to fill the canvas with black. We are going to create the main text that we wish to apply the flames to. In this tutorial I have written the letter T using Times New Roman font. Grab the Text Tool from the Tool Panel on the left side of your workspace and create your text. From your Layers Panel, Right-Click on the text layer you just created and choose Blending Options. Apply an Outer Glow to your text with the following specifications.
Your text should now look identical to the image below.
Once again access the Layers Panel and duplicate your existing text by dragging its layer on to the Create a New Layer icon.
Right-click on the duplicated text layer and choose Clear Layer Style to remove the Outer Glow style. Go through Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur and apply a blur of 10 px.
Using the Smudge Tool, we are going to smudge the blurred text to give it a blazing flame- like effect. Grab the Smudge Tool 
from the Tool Panel and right click on the canvas to set the Master Diameter to 22px. Access the top panel and set the Strength to 50%.
The way to smudge the blur goes something like what is shown in the sequence below. I have smudged every stroke twice to get the same results seen below
Here is how the processes of smudging turned out with me
Duplicate the layer that you have just smudged by dragging it onto the Create New Layer Icon. Go through Filters>Blur>Radial Blur and apply the following options.
Press Ctrl+F to apply the Radial Blur once more to get results similar to this.
Once more, duplicate the original text layer and clear its styles by right clicking on it and choosing Clear Layer Style. Go through Filter>Distort>Wave, set the Number of Generations to 5, Type to Sine and click on Randomize to generate random wave output results.
This completes the processes of adding the special effects to our text before we give it a burning flame color. Here is how mine turned out.
Giving the Text a Blazing Flame Color
We are done with the blaze effect and now we will colour our text. Go through Image>Mode>Grayscale. Photoshop will ask you to merge all layers and discard color information, click yes to proceed. Now go through Image>Mode>Indexed Color, click yes when asked to flatten layers. Finally go through Image>Mode>Color Table and choose Black Body from the drop down menu.
Your final results should look something like this.
This concludes our tutorial, I hope that you learnt something new from it, feel free to email me on diablo@oman3d.com for any comments or questions or alternatively post in the Oman3D Forum to get instant feedback.
- End of Tutorial.