Step 1: Open A New Photoshop Document
Open a new document in Photoshop by going up to the File menu and choosing New..., or by using the keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+N (Win) / Command+N. You can choose your own width and height for your document, but if you want to follow along, I chose the 640x480 size from the list of available presets to keep things simple. I've also left my Resolution value set to its default of 72 pixels/inch. Since I'm creating this text effect for the web, it makes no difference what I set the resolution value to, so the default value is fine:

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Create a new document in Photoshop. To follow along, use the "640x480" preset size.

Step 2: Add Your Text
With your new blank document open, grab the Type tool from the Tools palette or by pressing T on your keyboard. Make sure black is selected as your foreground color. If it isn't, just press D on your keyboard to reset it to black. Choose your font in the Options Bar at the top of the screen. Thick, heavy fonts work best for this effect. Then, go ahead and enter your text. I'm going to use "Impact", and I'll type the words "LIGHT BURST":

[img]http://plumcap.com/images/2dc95c.png[img]

Choose a thick, heavy font, and with black as your foreground color, enter your text.



Step 3: Resize Your Text With Free Transform
With your text layer selected in the Layers palette, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+T (Win) / Command+T to bring up the Free Transform box and handles around your text. Hold down Shift+Alt (Win) / Shift+Option and drag out any of the corner handles to make your text larger and fill up more of the document area. Holding Shift constrains the text proportions, and holding Alt/Option resizes the text from the center:

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Resize the text with Photoshop's "Free Transform" command.

Make sure to still leave plenty of room around the text for our light burst effect. Press Enter (Win) / Return when you're done to accept the transformation.


Step 4: Rasterize Your Text
We're going to be applying several filters to our text, but Photoshop doesn't allow us to do that without first rasterizing it, which simply means to convert it into pixels. So again with the text layer selected, go up to the Layer menu at the top of the screen, choose Rasterize, and then choose Type. This will convert our text into pixels. It will still look the same in the document window, but in the Layers palette, the Type layer will now be a regular layer:

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After rasterizing the text, the Type layer in the Layers palette becomes a normal layer.

Step 5: Add A Selection Around Your Text And Save It
Ctrl-click (Win) / Command-click directly on the thumbnail preview area of the text layer in the Layers palette to quickly load a selection around your text

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Ctrl-click (Win) or Command-click directly on the tex thumbnail in the Layers palette
"Ctrl-click" (Win) / "Command-click" directly on the text thumbnail in the Layers palette.

Your text will now have a selection around it:

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The text is now selected.

With the text selected, go up to the Select menu at the top of the screen and choose Save Selection. When the Save Selection dialog box appears, just click OK. There's no need to name it or make any changes to the options.

Once you've saved your selection, press Ctrl+D (Win) / Command+D to deselect your text.

Switch over to your Channels palette for a moment (it's grouped in beside the Layers palette) and you'll see your selection saved as a new channel named "Alpha 1" at the very bottom. We'll be coming back here a bit later to load our selection again:

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The selection saved as a new channel in Photoshop's

Step 6: Use "Fill" To Fill Your Text Layer With White And Set The Blend Mode To "Multiply"
Switch back to your Layers palette once again, and with the text layer selected, go up to the Edit menu at the top of the screen and choose Fill, or press Shift+F5 on your keyboard to quickly bring up Photoshop's Fill dialog box. When the dialog box appears, set the Contents to White and change the Blending Mode to Multiply:

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Photoshop's Fill dialog box

Click OK when you're done. Nothing will seem to have happened in your document window, but if you look at your text layer's thumbnail in the Layers palette, you'll see that all of the empty space around the text has now been filled with white, while leaving the text black thanks to that "Multiply" mode.


Step 7: Apply The Gaussian Blur Filter To The Text
Go up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, choose Blur, and then choose Gaussian Blur. When the Gaussian Blur dialog box appears, enter a Radius value of about 4 pixels and click OK to apply a slight blurring to the text:

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Apply the Gaussian Blur filter to the text.

Photoshop's Gaussian Blur filter dialog box

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Here's the text after applying Gaussian Blur:
Photoshop Text Effects: The text is now slightly blurred
The text is now blurred slightly.


Step 8: Apply The "Solarize" Filter To The Text
With the text layer still selected, go back up to the Filter menu and this time choose Stylize, and then choose Solarize. This will turn the document black, and your text will appear as a white stroke:

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The text after applying the Solarize filter

The image after applying the Solarize filter.

Step 9: Lighten The Text With Levels
The text is looking a little dark, so let's lighten it. Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+L (Win) / Command+L to bring up Photoshop's Levels command, and drag the white point slider on the right in towards the left until you reach the right edge of the histogram:

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Photoshop's Levels dialog box
With the Levels dialog box open, grab the white point slider on the right and drag it to the right edge of the histogram to brighten the text.

Click OK. The text will now appear much brighter:

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Photoshop Text Effects: The text is now much brighter
The text is now much brighter after applying Levels.


Step 10: Make A Copy Of The Text Layer
We need to make a copy of the text layer at this point, so to do that, with the text layer selected, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J, which will add a copy of the layer above it in the Layers palette:

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Step 11: Result

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