Step 27: Add A Layer Mask To The Text Layer

At the moment, it looks like our text and the flames are two separate things (which of course they are). It looks like the text is sitting it front in our document and the flames are burning away behind it. That's fine if that's the effect you want, but what I want is for it to look more like the letters themselves are on fire, which means we need a way to blend the text and the flames together. The reason it looks like the text and the flames are separate is because we can clearly make out the sharp edges of the letters in front of the flames. Let's finish things off then by removing some of those sharp edge. We'll do that using a layer mask.

With the text layer still selected, click on the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette:

This adds a layer mask to the text layer. We can't see it in the document itself, but if we look in the Layers palette, we can see that a layer mask thumbnail has appeared on the text layer:

Step 28: Select The Brush Tool

Grab Photoshop's Brush Tool from the Tools palette, or quickly select it by pressing the letter B on your keyboard:

Step 29: Set The Foreground Color To Black

To remove some of the sharp edges from the text, we'll need to paint over them on the layer mask with black, which means we need to set our Foreground color to black. Make sure you have the layer mask selected in the Layers palette (the layer mask thumbnail should have a white highlight border around it. Click on it to select it if it doesn't). Press the letter D on your keyboard to quickly set your Foreground and Background colors to their defaults. This can be a bit confusing, but when you have a layer mask selected, the default Foreground and Background colors are actually the opposite of what they are normally (see Step 5). Your Foreground color will become white and your Background color will become black (if they're not already). We need to swap them, which we can do by pressing the letter X on the keyboard. As we can see in the color swatches in the Tools palette, the Foreground color is now set to black:

Step 30: Paint Away Some Of The Sharp Edges Of The Letters

With the layer mask and Brush Tool selected and black as our Foreground color, use a small, soft edge brush to paint away some of the sharp edges of the letters, especially along the tops but also in different areas along the bottom and in the middle. The easiest way to resize your brush is with the left and right bracket keys (the [ and ] keys to the right of the letter P on the keyboard). Pressing the left bracket key makes the brush smaller each time you press it. The right bracket key makes the brush larger. To soften the brush edges, hold down your Shift key and press the left bracket key a few times. Each time makes the brush edges softer until you reach 0% hardness. Holding Shift and pressing the right bracket key makes the brush edges harder. Again, you'll want to use a small, soft edge brush for this. As you paint, the edges will disappear revealing the flames underneath, giving the illusion that the letters themselves are on fire:

If you make a mistake, press the letter X on your keyboard to swap the Foreground and Background colors, making white your Foreground color. Paint with white over the mistake, the press X to swap the colors again and continue painting away the edges. Here's what my effect looks like after making my way around each letter. The text itself now looks as if its on fire after blending the edges with the flames:

If you notice the same problem I'm seeing, where the very bottom of the text appears to be slightly higher than the flames, creating an orange outline around the bottom of the letters, simply press the letter V on your keyboard to quickly select the Move Tool, then press the down arrow key on your keyboard once or twice to nudge the text down until the letters and the flames line up.

And with that, we're done! Here is my final "fire text" effect:

And there we have it!