Fire effects are always great, if everything is done right, but we won’t set a building on fire today, because that requires a lot of work (I am talking about “adding a fire effect to a building’s image”, let’s set things straight once and for all, OK?). Text in flames looks great, and creating it isn’t that hard, so let’s do this instead and leave the more advanced fire effects for the future, all right?

1. Press Ctrl+N to create a new document, you can have any settings you want, but try to use mine as a guide for now. Be sure to have a black background and white text.

2. Use the Type Tool to add some text, and be sure to increase spacing a little. To do this, you have to go to Window>Character, and there increase the spacing setting (in the screenshot below, I set it to 100).

3. Now, create a copy of the text layer, then rotate the canvas 90CW and use Filter>Stylize>Wind 2-3 times, until you get a result similar to the screenshot below.

4. Rotate the canvas 90CCW to get the text “back on its feet” again, and then apply Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur, using a blur radius of about 5-8 pixels.

5. Create a copy of the layer where you applied blur, and then go to its Blending Options and set Color Overlay to Red.

6. Set Color Overlay of the copy to Orange or Yellow, and be sure to move this layer a bit (simply select the Move Tool and use the arrow keys).

7. Merge the two layers using the Color Overlay and then go to Filter>Liquify to shape the flames.

8. Practice with the default Warp tool shaping your flames in the Liquify window. My brush settings are 15/50/75, but you can use different ones, of course.

6. Now, you can use some styles for your text, and even for the flames layer. Here’s one of my results!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and I’ll be waiting for your questions, as usual. Be sure to get back for another drop of  Photoshop knowledge!