Glowing Text Tutorial for psp7 (though it should translate pretty simply)
(by the way, the font used is "Champignon" from DaFont.




I’ve just found a really easy way to create the glowing text effect without too much faffing around - or the hassle of downloading filters and such-like. Originally I used floating text, filters, and various other (sometimes accidental) effects for a less-appealing look.

I’m starting of with an ugly example – I know it looks bad, but I couldn’t find any icons that needed the effect, and I thought the colours would be nice and dark to show the effect. Ok, I’m lying, I just adore text that is absolutely unreadable in a very ugly colour scheme.



The text is Anti-alias, because it gives a smoother, prettier effect. I resent that if I want to outline my text I have to turn this off otherwise the outline looks clunky. Anyway, put your text on your image, and check Anti-alias if you want.

Now choose the Magic Wand tool and click anywhere on the background. You should get the “marching ants” effect around your text like this…


(Zoomed in so you can actually see it).

Go to Selections > Invert then
Selections > Modify > Expand

I chose 1 pixel, but it’s up to you.

Now create a new raster layer (Layers > New Raster Layer) - don't de-select anything.

Flood-fill the new layer with the colour of your choice. I like white best, darker colours tend to look murky and messy - but then, that might work on the graphic you're currently working on.



Now, move the new layer below the text layer (Layers > Arrange > Move Down).

Go back to your icon or image you were working on and paste it as a new layer (Edit > Paste > As New Layer) behind your text. The easiest way to get it behind the text is to have the background layer selected before you paste, but you can play around with the layers if you forget to do this (Layers > Arrange > Move Down).



Looks horrible, but the last step takes care of that! Now you get to play with Guassian Blur. Effects > Blur > Guassian Blur

This is at 2.00
This is at 4.00

You can also use a motion blur (usually 90 degrees works well) for a background line rather than a blur. An example of this can be found here (at the bottom of the page, the final effect of the tutorial).

This is a motion blur set to 90 degrees at a strength of 25.

Pretty cool, huh?

(Feedback is appreciated - such as did I even make sense?)