Fast Text Effects With 3rd Party Software

This week I'm going to take some black text and see what we can do with it using a few of these third party plug-ins. I will be using 2 of Alien Skin's products (Eye Candy 4000 and Xenofex),and Flaming Pear's Super Blade Pro.

To begin, I'm creating a new white image, a new layer, and entering text with the type mask tool. Then I'm filling it with black Here's the foundation image:

For those of you who collect fonts, this is called Eight Track... it's a freeware font but I'm not sure where I picked it up!

Ok, now that the base is in place (I never fool around with the base layer, remember?), I'm going to duplicate it and start filtering. I would like my text to have an outline or border of some sort, so I'll create a new layer beneath the duplicate layer. I can play with this later... let's see what the text turns out like first.

I really like Super Blade Pro for generating textures, so I'll start there. Here is a snapshot of the Super Blade Pro interface with my settings... keep in mind that I didn't tweak these much- they are nearly default.

For a closer look at our text after one filter setting is applied, take a look at this:

Now that is pretty cool, considering we have barely started! Some other variations (using the randomizer, or'dice' button) appear thus:

There are many variations we could consider, but let's stick with our first image for this exercize.I really like the chrome effect this first batch of settings gave us, so let's play with Eye Candy 4000 for the next step. To prevent an error I can't back out of (something I'm prone to do) I'll duplicate the chromed layer and work on it. I'm also mindful to keep my selection active. This just makes things easier.

Ok, with Eyecandy, I applied the default settings for Bevel Boss and then followed up with the defaults for Glass. Here is our text now:

We lost a lot of the chrome, but the glassy effect is always and eye catcher!

Now I'm just going to copy this selection, move the selection one pixel to the left and one pixel up, paste, and repeat this 6 or 7 times. This gives us some depth to make those letters really stand off the page. Once this looks fairly deep, I fill the background layer with back (simply to give me a different color scheme perspective), return to the first chrome layer and apply the Xenofex Electrify Filter. I'll add a slight twirl to this layer.

After adding a bevel and inner glow to the top most layer (using the Photoshop Layer Styles), here is our end result:

Not too bad for a few minutes work! Eye Candy 4000, Xenofex, and Super Blade Pro are all actionable, so you can repeat this effect over and over as needed in action form.

This example, as always, was quick and easy. Granted, with some work you could probably duplicate this effect using Photoshop exclusively, but using 3rd party plug-ins does give you a powerful set of tools that will help trim your development time.