369 Setting type on fire with the Flame Generator

- Hey gang this is Deke McClelland. Welcome to Deke's Techniques, last week you may recall that I introduced you to the flame generator which is new to the latest version of Photoshop CC 2014, it's really the flame filter but it sounds cooler to call it the flame generator and it turns you into a pixel-based pyromaniac. This week I'm gonna show you how to apply that same filter to these molten letters and I showed you how to create said molten letters way back in 2011 in Deke's Techniques 008 and lo these three and a half years later I am now gonna show you how to use the flame generator to set them on fire.

Here, let me show you exactly how it works. Alright, here's the final fire type effect just so you have a chance to see it on-screen. We're gonna be starting off inside of this document and what we're looking at is the molten letter effect that I showed you how to create way back in 2011 in Deke's Techniques 008 "Creating a Molten Letter Effect." So you can refer back to that movie if you like. I've also gone ahead and kept the original editable text version of this type so I'll go ahead and turn it on.

It's this layer right here "fire" and I'll turn off the "fire type" for a moment and then I'll click on that layer to select it. Now, I wanna preserve the editable text so I'll go ahead and press Ctrl + J or Cmd + J on a Mac to jump it to a new layer and then I'll turn off the original. And with the duplicate selected I'll go up to the Type menu and choose "Convert to Shape." And that goes ahead and converts each one of the letters to a path outline. I also need to bring those path outlines into the Paths panel. So I'll go ahead and switch to that panel by clicking on its tab and then I'll double-click in this temporary path outline and I'll go ahead and rename it "letters" and as soon as I click OK you can see that makes a duplicate of the path outlines.

Now I don't necessarily want them to be selected so I'll press the A key to switch to the black arrow tool, the one that Photoshop calls the Path Selection Tool and then I'll click off the path outlines to deselect them. Now you wanna make sure that "letters" remains selected in the Paths panel and then switch back to the letters panel, turn off that shape layer, turn on "fire type" and go ahead and click on it to make it active. Now you wanna make a new layer by pressing Ctrl + Shift + N or Cmd + Shift + N on a Mac and I'll call this layer "flames" and click OK. Alright, now that we have a brand new pixel-based layer and we're seeing our path outlines, we can go up to the Filter menu, choose Render and choose Flame.

And very likely you'll see a warning telling you that your path outlines are too long. You may recall that only effects the preview. So go ahead and click OK to bring up the Flame dialog box. And in my case the preview's showing me the F and just part of the i. Now I'm gonna burn through these settings pretty quickly here. For starters, I'm gonna set the Flame Type to option number 3 here, "Multiple Flames, One Direction." And that way all of the flames will be moving upward. Then I'm gonna increase the length value to 400 and I'll tab my way to the width value, now if you're working on a PC, you may need to press the Tab key a couple of times.

Now I'll take the width value up to 100 and I'll tab my way down to the angle value which I'm gonna leave set to 0 by the way, so that I get vertical flames. But I need to increase the interval value so that the flames aren't quite so close together and so I'll take it up to 100. And I'll leave this check box turned on. Now if you find that the preview isn't really keeping up with you, then drop down to the Quality setting and change it to Draft and that will also help you to quickly gauge the effect in Photoshop.

Next I'm gonna take this complexity value right here down to 5 and I'm gonna take the turbulent value up to 50. I'll leave the jag value set to 0 and I'm gonna take the Opacity value, because we'd have way too much heat in the flames, I'm gonna take the Opacity value down to just 7. Ah it doesn't look right at this point inside the preview but it's gonna look great in just a moment. Now you might figure that we want to crank this flame bottom alignment value down to 0 so that all of the flames exactly align with the bottoms of the letters but if you do that, I'll just go ahead and show you what that looks like by clicking OK.

That's going to result in all of the tops being aligned with each other as well which doesn't look right at all. So I'll go ahead and press Ctrl + Z or Cmd + Z on a Mac in order to undo that change and I'll press Ctrl + Alt + F or Cmd + Opt + F in order to re-apply that last filter using different settings I'll press the Enter key or the Return key on the Mac to hide the alert message and then I'll drop down to this flame bottom alignment option and I'll crank it all the way up to its maximum of 100. Now a Flame Style of Normal is just fine, although you can experiment with Violent as well.

But I'm gonna change the Flame Shape to pointing so that the flames taper toward the top. I'll leave the Custom Color check box turned off and then I'll also turn off Randomize Shapes, that way you and I can achieve the same results if you're working along with me. And I'll crank the Arrangement value up to 50. Now any time that you're applying this filter, for the very first time when you're checking out a new effect in other words, you wanna go ahead and set Quality to Draft (fast) that way you can preview the effect very quickly and then click OK.

And the reason is because you're gonna get a much better sense for how the effect looks here inside Photoshop as opposed to inside the dialog box preview. Now let's say I think this looks really great and I don't think it looks perfect but the rest of the changes we're gonna have to make using Advanced Blending here inside the Layers panel. So now I want to commit to the flame effect but of course I don't want all of this banding that we're seeing right here. So what I need to do is apply that same effect at a higher quality setting, so I'll go ahead and zoom back out and I'll press Ctrl + Z or Cmd + Z on a Mac to undo those flames and I'll press Ctrl + Alt + F or Cmd + Opt + F followed by Enter or Return to bring up the Flame dialog box.

And I'll go ahead and change the Quality setting to Medium. And you may wanna also take a moment to save your Preset by choosing the Save Preset option but I've already saved my settings as "fire type." So all I need to do is click OK in order to apply that better flame effect. And a moment later I end up with this effect here. Alright I'm gonna take these flames and move them all the way down the stack by dragging them to just above the background layer. And I also wanna create a little bit of an edge, a little bit of distinction around the letters.

So I'm gonna start by switching to the Paths panel and clicking under the letters in this empty area right here in order to hide those path outlines. Then I'll switch back to the Layers panel and I'll select the "fire type" layer and I'll drop down to the FX icon and choose Outer Glow. Now in my case I don't want a bright glow I want a dark one, so I'll click on this color swatch and I'll drag the circle to the lower left corner of this color field in order to dial in black and I'll click OK. I'll crank the Opacity up to 100 percent and I'll change the Blend Mode to Multiply.

And then finally I went ahead and cranked the Size value up to 33 pixels in order to achieve this effect here, at which point I'll go ahead and click OK in order to accept that change. Now, we've still got a little bit of blending to perform before we end up with this final effect here but that is at least one way to use the new flame generator in order to create fire type here inside Photoshop CC. Alright, so far so good but we still have a little more work to do. We've gotta blend those flames with the letters and I'm gonna do exactly that in the follow-up movie that's available to those of you who are members of Lynda.com and incidentally for a different take on flaming letters you can check out Deke's Techniques way back in 2011 number 009 and I think this effect, because it's real, it's a little bit cooler but it's a lot more work as well.

If you're waiting for next week's free movie I'm gonna show you how to create secret message text in Photoshop. Deke's Techniques, each and every week, keep watching.