Creating the Exploding Light Text Effect

When you are a graphic designer or simply passionate about graphic design, editing and implementing various text effects is inevitable. Making the text look like it is exploding expresses your creativity, and it is also the favorite effect to most graphic designers around the world. It’s easy to do it and I’m going to show you how.

This is what we want to accomplish:

Step 1

First, choose a nice, big, and heavy font. I’m using the font Tank, but you can choose the one you like the best.

Create a square document in Photoshop(1200 x 1200 at 300 dpi). Make the background black and make sure the text is in white.

Step 2

Your text should get a texture now and you can add it by applying Grain Texture or you can purchase some of the texture packs available for Photoshop. If you are applying Grain Texture, then experiment with values and add the ones you find realistic. Also, the Texture menu contains many other patterns that you should try out. When you apply the texture, you should go to Image – Adjustments – De-saturate, and adjust the levels to make black parts blacker and white parts whiter.

Step 3

Now, you need a background and you can make a freehand selection with the Lasso Tool around the text. Then:

Select – Modify – Feather – 50 pixels

Fill the selection with solid black on the new layer behind your text

Filter – Render – Difference Clouds. You will need to repeat the Difference Clouds a few times before you are happy with the results

Set the Opacity of the clouds layer to 50%

Step 4

Download the Explosion Brush Set or you can just use the various shapes of the brushes from the

Brush Tool to create the illusion of explosion. You can also add little lines that show the sparkles that follow the explosion. To add these thin lines, you have to use the brush and set the minimal size. This is the part where you have to be creative, think about where you would like this explosion to take place (in the middle of the letters, top, bottom etc.), and how big it should be.

Step 5

Now, we can add lighting effects. In order to do that, you should create a new layer and use the

Elliptical Marquee Tool to draw an oval selection. Feather the selection you made by 30, fill it with black on a new layer, and then render the difference clouds a few times.

Now, we have to reshape the light streak with: Edit – Transform – Warp tool. You should create an arc that you can place around the letters. The main goal is to make it seem like the streaks of light are moving around the letters.

When you get the right shape you want with the Warp tool, duplicate it, rotate, and place it around the rest of your text in order to correspond with the explosions.

Step 6

Now, we need a bigger explosion effect. In order to do this, choose a brush that would create the best illusion of the explosion, increase the size, and add it to a layer above all others. Then you should go to Filter – Blur – Radial Blur – Amount 3, and apply it to that layer.

Step 7

It’s time to add some color to your document. On the layer that is above all others, you should add

Gradient Map Adjustment Layer, and use the settings you can see on the image below.

Step 8

Now, we can proceed to add lighting, and in order to do this, we have to create another layer above the streaks. Then, choose a soft brush and start clicking. You should change the brush sizes between 200 and 400.

In order to light the explosion areas, you should make a new layer behind the text and use the same technique with the brush as the one written above.

Your text is done. This process is easy and you can use any font that you like. Also, you can experiment with textures, brushes, and have fun.

Conclusion

I want to thank you again for downloading my book. I hope the techniques included in this book will inspire you to follow the steps of professional editors and photographers and add more value to your photos.

The next step for you is to start implementing tips from this book and work on your images. There are probably a lot of old photos you can repair and colorize or make into artwork, etc.

Always bear in mind that you should express your creative side and edit according to your preferences. There are a lot of ways to make some edits and this book has showed you just some of them.

You can make your images look like they have been taken by a professional. In the end, if you liked all tutorials from the book, feel free to review and rate it.