Striking Text Effect Using Glows and Blends

In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to create the image above using a combination of glows and blends in 7 steps. All the files for this tutorial are at the bottom of this post.
I was watching an advert on BBC 2 (in the UK) for the new series of Heroes and it had a great animation of the number 2. Check the BBC2 Heroes website for an idea of what i’m talking about. So I thought I’d try to create something similar.

Step 1

Create a new blank psd file with the background set to black. Create a new layer and fill it with a radial gradient of green/blue to black originating from the right of the image and then set the layer opacity to 30%

Step 2

Create 3 new radial fills going from red to transparent, green to transparent and blue to transparent, and place them within their own group

Step 3

Create a new layer, set the foreground and background colors to mid gray and black respectively, then go filter > render > clouds
Then still on this layer go filter > noise >add noise and add noise of 4% with a gaussian distribution and tick monochromatic

Finally set this new layer to overlay with an opacity of 70%

Step 4

Create the shape of the number 2 on a new layer.

You can use one of your pre-installed fonts, however if you don’t think you’ve got the right font, draw your own using the pen tool. For the shape below I used franklin gothic font set to 800 px in size. Then converted the text into a path, and modified the individual points using the direct selection tool to a shape I was happy with. Next, I turned the path into a live selection. Lastly I filled that selection with the color black in a new layer.
Add inner and outer glows using layer styles to the number 2 (double click on the layer in the layer panel).
Outer glow settings:

inner glow settings:

Step 5

Using a white brush tool with 0% hardness paint strokes around the edges of the 2 on several new layers. Try experimenting with the smudge tool as well to push the paint around a bit.

Now set each highlight layer to overlay and experiment with the opacity levels to achieve a look similar to that below. For a slight color alteration I added a pale orange color overlay in layer styles to each layer.

Step 6

Create some funky lines to the rop right of the 2 on a new layer. To create these lines I used a brush set called winter breeze which you can find in the previous post 10 Groovy Brushes for Photoshop


Then create a layer mask for the new layer to hide the new lines which are visible over the 2 itself. Finally, in layer styles set a color overlay to yellow and an inner glow of mid orange and experiment with the choke and size settings to produce something like below:

Step 7

Now the final step, create a new layer yet again, fill it with black and go filter > render > lens flare and accept the default settings. Move the lens flare to an appropriate position then set the blend mode to linear dodge.

And that’s it. Below are links to the .psd file and the winter breeze brush. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. If you have any questions, write a comment below and i’ll reply.

PSD File Winter Breeze Brush Set