In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to Create a Burning Metal Text Effect in Photoshop. This is an beginner level Photoshop tutorials and the steps are quite easy to follow, have a try!
Along the way, we will go through some basic method of adding texture to your text, also practice the use of image adjustment layers and various layer blending modes.
Here is a preview of the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)
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OK Let’s get started!
To complete this tutorial, you will need the following stocks:
Font (pick any one from the list)
Step 1
Create a new document sized 1200px * 600px with black background, and type some texts on to the canvas with the font you just downloaded:
Apply the following layer blending options on this text layer:
Inner Shadow
Bevel and Emboss
Gradient Overlay
and you will have the following effect:
You can use some grunge brushset (lots of these on the internet) to paint some background texture as shown below:
Step 2
We will add some metal texture onto the text – load the metal image into Photoshop and select a piece as shown below:
Copy and paste the selection onto our document over the text layer, set it as clipping mask to it:
We can smooth the texture a bit by applying this Reduce Noise filter (Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise) to this metal layer:
and you will have the following effect:
Add the following adjustment layers as clipping mask of this text layer, above the metal texture layer:
Black and white
Levels
Curves
and here is the effect so far:
Step 3
We can now add some fire and produce some burning and melting effect. Load the fire image into Photoshop, and select the centre portion of the image as shown below:
Copy and paste this selection above all previous layers, set this layer as a clipping mask to the text layer as well:
Change the blending mode to “Hard Light”:
Duplicate this fire text layer once, and use the liquify filter to “melt” some part of it as shown below: (use the forward warp tool)
Make sure this duplicated layer is not a clipping mask, and blending mode is set to “Hard Light”, you will have the following effect:
Step 4
OK we’re almost done! I further added some cloud with a cloud Photoshop brush (you can use the cloud filter as well) around the text:
Flatten the image, and duplicate the background layer once, then apply the following “reduce noise” filter to it:
This way we can bring out some more deteils from the fire and metal texture from the text:
We can add some colour to the image with this selective color adjustment layer:
I apply a layer mask on the selective colour layer to hide some part of it, and here is the final effect I have: (click to enlarge)
That’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy it and find it useful! Till next time, have a great day!
11 Comments
Great tutorial, but I can’t make it :/
I’ll see other tutorial, and I hope to make it better :)
what is the name of the font that we are to download
@Don: you can pick any one from the list – the one I used is “Gothical” from this link: http://www.dafont.com/gothical.font
Add the following adjustment layers as clipping mask of this text layer ”
How do I do that?
Its an amazing tutorial but I failed to follow :(
Right click on the layer in the layer toolbar and select “create clipping mask.”
got all the way to the end of step 3 and failed :/
Im stuck it want let me select the fire as an clipping mask. the fire is just there and not covering just the letters, but not just the letter the whole picture. and i did cut out only the fire parts.
How to do the clouds?
Fail as many here in step 3. I feel as if there is something missing. Tut says “Duplicate this fire text layer once, use liquify and melt”… First of all my resulting layer doesn’t look anything somewhat near as in the picture shown – the tut shows an image where there are barely any flames visible. Layer mode hard light though makes all the flames pretty vibrant. Checked out other layer styles as well, the shown effect is not reproducable.
Second, if unchecking clipping mask, the new fire layer just covers all my previous work. It’s a pity. This tut would have just been what I needed. Maybe somebody could be more precise and specific about the steps that have to be done in part 3 of the tut? Thanks anyway. Was inspiring…
I think I figured out what’s missing in step 3 for those that had a problem creating what the author did.
The first flame layer has a clipping mask to the text layer (so the flames can only be seen where the text is). The blend mode is “Hard Light”.
When you duplicate that layer and unclip it from the text, the flames become visible everywhere. To fix this, Ctrl/Command-click on the TEXT layer to create a selection of it, then go up and click on the duplicated flame layer so the text selection is now on that.
From there, you can either select the inverse of the text (so all the flames OUTSIDE of the text area are selected) and hit delete; leaving only the flames within the text. Or with the shape of the text selected, make another copy of the duplicated flames. You can then delete the flame layer in the middle (the one where the flames are visible everywhere).
Either way you do it, be sure the top flame layer is also set to “Hard Light” or it will appear washed out and probably won’t show up well on the dark background when you start smudging it to create the flame/melt effect.