Text Coming Through Clouds

This tutorial will teach you how to make text appear as if it is coming through the clouds in a peaceful kind of pretty way. Isn't that nice? Off we go...

Step 1: Open a file with some nice clouds in it, or create your own clouds in a new document by selecting a blue foreground color, white background color, and Filter > Render > Clouds. There are a number of good tutorials on the web about creating realistic clouds in Photoshop.

Click to enlarge

Step 2: Select the "Type" tool and type something in the clouds. Next, double-click the layer and add an emboss (70% depth, 5px size, 2px soften, anti-aliased), and a gradient (I used the standard black to white at 100% opacity, 96 degree angle, 89% scale).

Step 3: With the text layer selected, click the "Add Vector Mask" button on the bottom of the "Layers" menu, as shown.

Make sure you have black as your foreground color, and pick a soft-edged round brush at 50% opacity.

Step 4: With your paintbrush, start painting over the text where you want the clouds to appear. If you get a message asking you to rasterize the type, click the vector mask in the layers palette, next to the "T" text icon.

Step 5: If you painted over something you want back, the beauty of layer masks is that you can erase mistakes. Simply switch to white as your foreground color and paint over the spots you want to bring back. By varying the opacities, you can get a nice effect. Add a shadow if you want and you're good to go.

Click to enlarge

...And with a red gradient

Hope you can get some use out of this one.