Photoshop Tutorials

Tutorial: Alien Text Effect
Software: Adobe Photoshop 6.0
Difficulty: Intermediate

This Adobe web tutorial will show you how to create Alien style text effects to jazz up your text.

Step 1: Fire up Adobe Photoshop and go to File + New and set the width to 300 and the height 150. (See diagram below)

Step 2: Choose the color black #000000 as your background color and the color #9CFF00 as your foreground color. (See diagram below)

Step 3: Now we will need to fill the canvas space with the black background color. Go to Edit + Fill + Background and click OK. Your canvas will now be black.
Step 4: Now you will need to select the type tool by clicking the T icon >> and choose the Type Mask Layer on type options bar at the top of Photoshop. The Type Mask Layer Icon looks like this >>
Step 5: Now click on the black canvas area and start typing your text. I typed in ALIENS FROM OUTER SPACE. Use a font that is thick and bold, I used Verdana size 30 + bold. Once you have typed your text click the tick in at the top in the right hand side.

Your text should look like the below diagram.

Step 6: Now you will need to fill the text with the green foreground color. Go to your layers and click the background layer. Now go to Edit + Fill + Foreground and click OK.

Now your text should look like the below diagram.

Step 7: Now go to Select + Feather 2 pixels

Step 8: Now go to Filter + Blur + Radial Blur Choose the settings 100, Zoom & Best

Step 9: Now repeat step 8 by pressing CTRL + F on your keyboard

Step 10: Now go to Select + Inverse and repeat step 8 again by pressing CTRL + F on your keyboard

Now to finish it off go to Layer + Flatten Image and then save it to your hard-drive

The finished Alien Text Effect should look like the below diagram.

Navigate on your computer to your photoshop program preset directory. Our settings indicate that it should look something like this :
c:\program files\adobe\photoshop 7.0\presets\

You will see a series of folders named brushes, contours, gradients, styles, color palettes, etc. If you fail to navigate to that folder - try doing a search for *.asl . That should show you files within one of your preset folders. You will then need only navigate one folder up to find your preset folder.

All of the files on our site are zipped - so you may need to get an extraction program. You can use winzip, winrar, or winace. You may click on any of those names to go directly to their respective download pages.

Once you have extracted your files. If you have extracted layer styles ( *.asl files) - you will want to copy them over to the preset folder called styles. If you have extracted brush files ( *.abr files) you will want to copy them over to the preset folder called brushes. If you have extracted custom shapes (*.csh files) you will want to copy them over to the custom shape files folder. If you have extractedgradients (*.grd files) you will want to copy them over to the gradients folder.

The changes you have made will only take effect once you have restarted adobe photoshop.

Click here to view our tutorial on use of your presets!