Design Magical Fire Energy Text Effect in Photoshop

Note: The Photoshop tutorial is done in CS6 – therefore some screenshot may have slighting different layout as in the earlier version. Some brushes are exclusive to Photoshop CS6.

Here is a preview of the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

PSD File Download

To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stocks:

Fire Texture

Step 1

Create a new document sized 700px * 1000px with black background, and use the gradient tool to fill background layer with the direction and colour shown below:

We will be add some light over the background. To do so, draw a few dots as shown below on a new layer:

Apply the following Motion Blur filter to this dot layer:

Then, apply the Motion Blur filter again, but with a different Angle setting:

and here is the effect so far:

Step 2

Use any font you want, type a letter on the canvas:

Apply the following layer blending options to this text layer:

Bevel and Emboss

Contour

Texture

Inner Shadow

Gradient Overlay

Use a red particle brush (this should come with Photoshop by default), paint some particles behind the text:

Step 3

Now we can paint some lines around the text to act as energy from the text. I used a 2px, 85% hardness brush tool:

Use a similar colour as the text, paint some lines around the text as shown below:

Keep painting more lines, trying mixing the colours to add more variety for the text:

Step 4

We will add some fire texture over the text. Load the fire texture into Photoshop and select a piece as shown below:

Copy and paste the selection over to our text, and warp its shape the fit and letter, so it looks like it’s part of the text:

Change the layer blending mode to “Screen” for this fire texture layer:

Duplicate this fire texture layer, and use the liquify filter to warp this fire texture as shown below:

Then duplicate the liquify fire layer a few more times, and attach them to different part of the text as shown below:

Optionally, you can add some more fires around the text as shown below:

That’s pretty much it for this tutorial!  If you’re happy with your own outcome, you can just leave at that.

I made a few colour adjustments afterwards, and here is my result: (click to enlarge)

Till next time, have a great day!