Creating spooky text- Photoshop 6 + 7

This can be a pretty neat effect when used correctly. It comes out kinda reminding me of a Blair Witch type style logo.

First, create a new document any size you want, with any type of background color you want. I did a 300x100 document with a black background.

Now select the type tool and select which font you wish to use from the font menu up top.

For a font, I used one called 'Alien League'. You can pick which one you want that fits the mood. Make sure you have anti-alias enabled, your text will look much crisper.

For a font color, I would use earth type tones, nothing that would be too contrasting to the background you are working with. Stay away from Pure Black ( #000000 ) or pure white ( #FFFFFF ). On a black background, I used a random shade of grey. ( #DEDEDE ).

Now here is where the fun part comes in. You want to duplicate the text layer you just did. So on your layers menu, you want to right click on the text layer you just did, and select 'duplicate layer', or click on 'Layer', then 'duplicate layer' from the menu up top with your text layer selected.

Now make sure the new, duplicate layer is selected, and select the move tool on the menu. Now with the arrow keys on your keyboard, nudge the duplicate text layer to the right about 6 times. This will look similar to the image below now.

Now, with the new duplicate layer still selected, click on filter on the menu up top, then click on blur, then gaussian blur. Click OK if it asks you to rasterize the layer. Use a radius setting of about 2 pixels.

Now for the final trick. Go back to your original text layer, and add the outer glow effect. This is done by clicking either on the F icon in the layers menu, or the menu up top by clicking on layer>layer style, and selecting outer glow with the following settings: 75 opacity, 0 noise, 0 spread, 5 size, 50 range, and 0 Jitter. I used a slightly different color than the default yellow. You can pick your own, or experiement with different colors. Below is the final result.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions?

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