Sun Spike

Create a new image in Photoshop by using: File/New. Make sure you give yourself tons of room; I used 250 x100 here but I would say at least 500 x 200 works best. Then make the background black and add some text to the center of your picture. I chose a font that had a lot of edges and flavor, but most fonts work well for this effect.

The next step is to right click your text layer and Rasterize it. Next you are going to want to make five (5) copies of your layer, do this by right clicking the layer and pressing Duplicate Layer. Then you are going to want to use the wind filter on each layer. This can be a little tricky.

The picture above shows the image half-way through the wind filter. Now for each layer you are going to want to us Filter/Stylize/Wind. However, in order to get it on all sides first have the wind coming in from the left, then the next layer have it coming in from the right. Now the tricky part: On the next two layers use Edit/Transform/90° CCW and 90° CW to change the orientation of the layer before you use the wind filter. When the wind is all done it should look like the picture below.

Now the next steps are the easy ones. Take the original text layer and use Ctrl+Click to highlight it. Then go to Select/Modify/Contract and use 1 pixel as your value. Then go to Edit/Fill and fill it with black (black needs to be your foreground color). It should look like the picture below.

Now you can make the wind effect more effective by merging all the text layers then making two copies of the full text layers. You can do this by pressing Ctrl+e to merge the layers down and then right clicking the merged layer and pressing Duplicate Layer. Next add some layer effects. I used Outer Glow and Bevel and Emboss on the defaults to simplify the tutorial but feel free to experiment. It should look at the picture below.

This is what the finished product should look like. Try adding some color with: Image/Adjustments/Hue/Saturation

The image below is one I did that was 500 x 200 and then changed the size to 250 x 100, see how much of a difference it makes?

This tutorial was made using Adobe Photoshop 7. Feel free to use this tutorial however you wish, but please link back to us.