How to bring Ice effect in text?

I looked at few tutorials on this for Photoshop and tried the same in PSE. It's simple and cool effect.

1. Open a blank document with black background. Write some text with Black color on it.

2. Now Control click on the text layer so that the text gets selected as shown.

3. Go to Filter>Artistic>Plastic Wrap. Now repeat this filter 10 times by pressing Control+F 10 times. The result may look something as shown below.

4. Now go to Layer>Layer Style>Style settings. Select Glow>Outer glow and select the color from color swatch to be "79d9f9". The output may look like as shown below :

5. Now rotate the image by 90 Right from Image>Rotate>90 Right. Now from Filter menu>Stylize>Wind. Click Ok. The output text would appear like this :

Now rotate Left 90 to bring it back.

6. Now go to Filter >Distort>Liquify. Use the Warp tool at some of the places to warp some areas of the text to given more frozen ice effect. The output may appear like this :

7. You may add a little Bevel from Layer Setting dialog.

8. Now go to Enhance>Adjust Color>Adjust Hue/Saturation. And change the color of the text to some less saturated bluish grey.

Check the checkbox "Colorize".  Here is how it will look after that :

One may add Wind effect again by rotating as we did in step 5. Here is my final output after applying the effect again :

How to have text with different image backgrounds using PSE8?

1. Open a blank file with black background.

2. Now Use text layer from left toolbar and write something on it as shown ;

3. Now open any image you want in text background. Select the image from project bin and drag it over the text layer we created in previous step such that text gets hidden behind it as shown.

4. Now from Layers menu, select Clipping mask and you are done.

5. Here is how your final output may look like if you use different images for every text. Using mutliple images is simple. We just need to perform the above steps repeatedly for every text layer and we have to use a different image which should be placed above every text.

How to write circular text using PSE8?

To illustrate this, I am taking an example of a text that i want to write on the boundary of a ring.

1. First of all, on a blank file, I cut out a ring using cookie cutter tool. Here is how my picture looks like.

2. Now I select the text horizontal type tool from left toolbar and write some text a we do normally.

3. Now keeping the text selected as shown in the image above, select the Text warp icon on top tool bar. The text warp icons shows an arc below the text "T"

4. A dialog box opens up which would ask to choose the shape over which you want your text to be warped. I chose "Arc" from the dropdown. I can use the Bend and distortion sliders to workout with the amount of my text bending and horizontal/vertical distortion i would need to fit the text properly over my circle.

5. Once i click Ok, i can use the top three options as shown marked below to make my text more comfortable with the circlular shape. These options will alow me to rotate the text, shew it or scale it so that it can fot nicely over the shape. These options appear when we try to perform any transformations to the text layer by dragging any of the corners.

6. Here is how my circular text looks like.

One can be creative and innovative with the other shapes in the Warp text dialog.

How to add glow to text using PSE ?

1. Open a new file from File>New>blank File.

2. Double click the icon near the color swatch on left toolbar to change the default colors to Black and white.

3. Now select paint bucket and click on the canvas to paint it black.

4. Now select text tool and create a text layer on Canvas and add any text.

5. Control+click on the text layer created in Layers Palette to select the text.

6. From effects panel, select any Bevel effect suiting your needs and double click(you can try various bevel effects).

7. Now click on the small icon on right on this text layer from layers palette to open style settings dialog.

 8. Reduce the Bevel size under bevel checkbox. Make it smaller as per your need(you can try experimentiong with different effects).

9. Now Check the checkbox for "Glow".

10. Select Outer(You may select iner if you require).

11. Select the color of the glow matching your text color.

12. Now experiment with the size, distance and opacity sliders to get the glow as per your needs. You may also add some dropshadow matching your glow color to give enhanced effects.

13. Crop if required. Here is the text with the steps illustrated above.

Its that simple!

How to create 3D text in Photoshop Elements

1. Open a new file in PSE Editor.

2. Now make the default colors in color swatch in the tool bar.

3. Select the text tool from left tools bar.

4. Write some text and simplify the text layer by right clicking the text layer in layers panel and choose "Simplify Layer".

5. Image >Free Transform.

6. Skew the layer to give 3 effect. Press Control and skew the text by extending the left top of the layer towards top left and right top toward a little down left(or some other orientation you may choose). Similar with bottom left and bottom rights.

7. Press Control selecting the text layer.

8. Select a gradient tool and choose colors and stroke from left to right or vice versa.

9. Now from Effects palette, select simple bevel and double click to give bevel effect. Click on the layer effect button on right and change the bevel level to 1 pixel.

10. Now create duplicates of this text layer say 15-20 duplicates. This will create a 3 D effect. Right click last duplicated layer and choose Clear layer style.

It's that easy !