light burst effect

 this Adobe Photoshop tutorial, we're going to see how to engulf text in an explosion of light and color.

There's quite a few steps involved in this text effect, and we'll be using a couple of filters that are not used very often in everyday Photoshop work, but creating the text effect is quite simple and the end result is definitely worth the effort.

Here's the text effect we're going for:

Let's get started.

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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 (Mac). 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:

Photoshop Tutorials: 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 blackis 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":

Photoshop Tutorials: 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 (Mac) to bring up theFree Transform box and handles around your text. Hold down Shift+Alt (Win) / Shift+Option (Mac) 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:

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

Posted in: Photoshop Text Effects Tutorials