Design an Interesting Fire Text Effect with Particles in Photoshop

In this Photoshop tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to Design an Interesting Fire Text Effect with Particles in Photoshop. This is an intermediate level tutorial so some steps can be a bit tricky, but why not have a try :)

Along the way, we will be using a fire stock image and attach it to a text base, then use a number of filters and custom brush to create an interesting particle effect.

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

Cloud Brushset (Pick one from the list)

Step 1

Create a new document sized 770px * 900px with black background, create a new layer and use the cloud brush you picked to add some cloud texture to the top and bottom part of the canvas as shown below:

Hint: If the default brush size is too large, reduce its size to fit our canvas size.

Create a new layer again and add some smoke pattern with a cloud brush (with layer opacity set to around 20%):

Use a soft eraser to remove the edges of the smoke layer so it blends into the background:

Step 2

Create a new layer and type a letter on this new layer with a dark grey colour:

Apply the following Stroke effect to this text layer:

Then change this colour of this text layer to black, you will have the following effect:

Load the fire texture into Photoshop, use the quick selection tool and select a piece as shown below:

Apply the following Refine Edge settings to smooth out the edge:

Copy and paste the selection onto our text as shown below:

Step 3

Now let’s add some liquifying effect to this fire texture, use the liquify filter with the following settings:

Then, use the forward warping tool in the liquify filter, go crazy on this fire texture and add some flowing effect:

Apply the following Black and White adjustment to this fire layer:

Duplicate this fire layer a few times, resize and rotate them, then attach them to different part of the text as shown below:

Step 4

Now we can add some fire particles onto the text – go back to the fire texture and use the quick selection tool to select a few fire pieces as shown below:

Apply the following Refine Edge option to the selection:

Copy and paste the selection onto our text, resize it and change the blending mode to “Hard Light”:

This is effect so far:

Duplicate this layer a few times and attach them to different parts of the letter as shown below:

Step 5

Now let’s make a simple stripe brush – create a new document with a thin rectangular shape, add a new layer and fill it with black colour as shown below:

Then define a new brush via Edit > Define Brush Preset:

Apply the following brush options to this brush:

Shape Dynamics

Scattering

Other Dynamics

Tick the “Airbrush” and “Smoothing” options.

Use this newly created brush, paint some particles around the text as shown below:

Step 6

We’re almost done! For some final retouches,  I added some red colour over the text with a colour balance adjustment layer (you can also use a red brush to paint over the text with the “Color” blending mode):

Hint: use layer mask on this colour layer to assist masking colours from the areas that you don’t want to have colours on.

Use a soft white brush, add some highlight over the text with the “overlay” blending mode for this highlight layer:

I also added some more fire texture around the text with “Hard Light” blending mode for those added fire layers:

I also added some lines with method described in this tutorial here:

and here is the final effect I have for this tutorial: (click to enlarge)

That’s it for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy it and find it useful! Till next time, have a great day!