I Smell Smoke! Wood Burning in Photoshop 6

1. Let's start with a new image.

2. Create a new layer.

3. Select a light brown/tan for the foreground color, and a darker brown for the background.

4. Select the Reflected Gradient and fill the new layer from the center to the bottom.

5. Let's add a bit of noise:

6. Now for a motion blur:

7. If you like, you may want to bring up the Brightness/Contrast and do some adjusting. Tweaking the contrast will give your wood a richer, deeper color.

8. Select the magic wand tool and set the tolerance to 15. Click an area in the wood grain to bring up a jagged selection. Go to Filter>Distort>Pinch to give the selection some 'warp'.

9. Now go to Filter>Distort>Twirl:

10. Now enter your text with the Type Mask Tool. You will want to make your type fairly large and thick. Mine is set to 150 points.

11. Go to Layer>New>Layer Via Copy.

12. Apply a bevel with the following settings:

13. Command/CTRL+ Click Layer 2 to bring up your type selection. Contract the selection by 10 pixels.

14. Again, go to Layer>New>Layer Via Copy.

15. Remove the bevel from this layer, and instead apply an inner shadow.

16. Time to get crazy! Duplicate this layer. Create a new layer below it, select the duplicate again and Coomand/CTRL+E to merge them together. Set the merged layer to overlay, and drop the opacity to 50%.

17. Select Layer 3 again. Select the burn tool with a feathered brush. Not too large - I'm using a 27. Color the inlayed text, though do not thouroghly cover it with the tool. Just give the illusion that heat had been applied to the wood at one time or another.

18. You can now go back to the original woodgrain layer and apply some burn there. Keep in mind that the more you drag the burn tool across an area, the darker the burn will appear! Try using some different brushes also - the natural set works well for this work.

Here's where Eye Candy 4000 will come in handy. Remember that top layer we set to overlay? If you have Eye Candy 4000, apply some smoke to this layer.

Just for fun, make your original type layer active. Select Inverse, and then click on the original wood grain layer. Go to Brightness/Contrast and make the image darker, then go to Hue/Saturation and reduce the saturation.