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Fiery Looking Splatter Text Effect

posted by John Owen on July 10th, 2009, in Photoshop, Text Effects | 8 Comments

You will be creating the following image:

Click for full size

To complete this tutorial you will need to download the Bubble Brush Pack.

Step 1 – The Gradient

Create a new document, 800 x 600 px. At the start this will all be created in blue, the reason for this is because I used a hue/saturation layer colored red to achieve the browny/red effect. You can keep it blue if you want.

Select the gradient tool and change the gradient to radial, here are the settings:

Draw the gradient from bottom to top, in this direction:

Step 2 – Splatter Text Creation

Create a new text layer and type out whatever you want, I chose webmediamag. The font just has to be a clean simple font, use capitals and set the opacity to 15%. This will be a guide to creating the splatter text.

Create a new layer and select the Brush Tool, choose a nice light blue color. You will have to downsize the bubble brushes to go over the text. Make sure to rotate some of the splatters using the free transform tool. The brushes wont fit perfectly and this can be a bonus too giving it more of a splatter effect.

Put each letter on a different layer so if yuo have two of the same letter, copy and paste the layer.

Use a variety of brushes and don’t forget to put a little splatter around the letters for extra effect. I’ll show you some stages.

For curvey letters, make the letter wobly to achieve a greater splatter effect. Don’t be afriad to go out of the guide bounds. It’s a splatter effect!

Step 3 – Border Shadow & More Splatter

Once finished, you should have something like this:

Now we need to add more splatter, create a new layer and apply some splatter effects around the text like so:

Remove the guide text layer now.

Create a new layer above the rest of the layers and use the brush tool to create a shadow around the edges.

Step 4 – Text Gradient

If your happy with your text and don’t want to make any more changes then merge all the text layers (not the extra splatter) into one layer and apply this layer style:

Step 5 – Grunge Texture

Grab a texture from this Grunge Texture Pack, I used number 3. Put it in your document and downscale it. Set the blend mode to Overlay. Make sure the layer is above all other layers.

I think this looks good already, you can stop here if you want!

Step 6 – Text Shadow

Duplicate the text layer and remove the Gradient Overlay Layer Style, bring it underneath the original layer.

Make a selection of everything in the layer by CTRL + Clicking the layers picture box. Press D on your keyboard to set photoshop to it’s default colors (B&W). Press ALT + Backspace Twice.

Now Guassian Blur this layer

Step 7 – Hue/Saturation Layer

Create a new Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer before the Border Shadow and set the layer opacity to 70%. Set the options of the layer to this:

Step 8 – Brighten It Up!

I brushed in behind the text a kind of explosion effect, radial blurred it and then set the blending mode to soft light. The color of the brush was a light blue so the hue/saturation changed it to a nice orange. I also used a curves adjustment layer to increase the brightness of the image.

Finished! I hope you like it, any questions you have just post a comment.

Download the .PSD