The “Matrix” trilogy needs no introduction, and I am sure that all all those that have seen the movies remember that green text flowing all over… but how many have tried to redo this effect on their computers? Well, since this is pretty easy to do, let’s get things rollin’, shall we?

As you can see in the screenshot above, the result shouldn’t look bad at all, and the path to it is much shorter than expected, as you will see right now.

1. Create a new document in Photoshop, using any settings you want. Below, you can check mine as a reference.

2. Copy and paste some black text on white background using the Type Tool. The font and size should be chosen depending on the size of the image.

3. Rotate canvas 90CW to get some vertical text, as needed.

4. Go to Filter>Texture>Grain and use settings 100,100, Vertical.

5. Now, in the same Filter menu, go to Artistic>Neon Glow and use settings 6,16, and a green color that suits your tastes and the purpose (play with the settings, because if you are not using same text size and font as me, you may need to use different ones).

6. Next step, add some Glowing Edges, from the Stylize submenu of the same Filter menu. The settings I used were 2,8,2, but you may need different ones. This is where I notice that I should have used much smaller text…well, you can always use the History tool to get back and change text size, but I will go on this way.

7. Duplicate the text layer and run Motion Blur on it, using the settings -90, 100.

8. Now, you can set blending mode of this layer to Color Dodge and move it around a bit.

What you can see above is the result of two mistakes - I used a text that was too large compared to my image size, and there wasn’t enough space between the letters. Since the method used is the same, here’s what I got after only a few minutes…

Don’t forget - no matter how accurate (or not, in this case…) can be one tutorial, the best way to learn how to do it yourselves is to experiment with your own settings. After all, if you don’t get it right in the first run, you should try again!