Tesla Text

1. Start with a new image. Mine is 380x120 with a background colour of #666666.

2. Set your foreground colour to #000000.

3. Using the Text Tool, type your text in the centre of your image. Preferably in a big, fat, plain font. Something like mine will do just fine.



4. Ok, this is where it gets a little bit messy. So pay attention. Go to the Layers Palette, and Ctrl + click on your Text layer. This will bring it up as a selection.

5. Go to Select > Modify > Expand and use 2 as the value to expand by.



6. Open up the Channels Palette and click on the Save Selection as Channel button. i.e. The little grey square with a white circle in the middle of it. This will create a new channel, Alpha 1.

7. Press Ctrl + D to deselect your text and click on the Create a New Channel button. This creates a new channel called Alpha 2.

8. Reset your colour palette by pressing D. Remember that the channel colours
will be the inverse of the normal palette.

9. Go to Filter > Texture > Stained Glass. Set the Cell Size to 10; Border Thickness to 2; and Light Intensity to 0. Here is what mine is currently looking
like.



10. Now Ctrl + Click on your Alpha 2 Channel with the Stained Glass Pattern. This will select the pattern. Now, whilst holding Ctrl + Alt + Shift, click on the Alpha 1 Channel also. Now you will have selected your text also, but only running through where the electricity beams are. Making sense?

11. Return to your Layers palette and create a new layer on top of your existing text layer. Using the Paint Bucket Tool, set the Opacity to 50% and fill it with the colour #99CCFF.

12. Now go to Filter > Distort > Ripple (on 100%) and apply this filter a few times to get a nice random pattern.

13. Now right click on the new layer (Layer 1) and select Blending Options. Open the Inner Glow page, and use these settings:



14. Change the Outer Glow settings to these too:



15. With a few touchups here is my final image. =]