First I will make fire text using a very simple canonical typography. Here you can see the text used as input for the effect: an "A" in Arial font and big size (I got it using the "Preview Text" button).

To apply a fire text effect to this, go to [Procedural Text Effects] / [Fire] and choose the effect showed below.

Set configuration like that and apply the effect (click "Calculate Effect"):

• Text to render: A;
• Fonte Name: Arial (it's in the font list, in the "A" tab);
• Font Size: Big;
• All check-boxes unmarked.

This is the result: an "A" made of fire, but preserving as much as possible the font face. It's a pre-requisite for a generic effect generator: try to obey the pattern it receives.

If you want a result with fire flames, you have several options. The best choice depends on the style of result and how realistic the final image should be.

You can get flames with no effort just taking advantage of some of font faces. Also using the closure option ("Use typography as effect closure" check-box) sometimes you can modify a lot the result got with the same font.

Here you see several fire texts done just using the effect directly over the typography (always using big size):

Font used: Flamer. Simple stylistic result to be used when you don't want a realistic image. Made using closure option.

Fonte used: Flames. Another non-realistic result made with closure option. Can be useful in playful environments.

If you prefer something less subtle, from the previous image you can make a yellow text with a good touch of red. Go to [Image Editor] / [Brigthness], modify the brightness in -20% and save the image. Using this last result as input, go to [Image Editor] / [Contrast] and change the contrast in +50%. So you will get the image you see below.

Font used: Fade to Gray. This font gives you a nice fade in fire without generate flames.

Font used: Flame. You get some nice flames, but no high fading. This image will be used below as input to get an unusual blue fire text.

Font used: Amped For Evil. As you can see, you already get some flying fading flames using this font. This font has a kind of hole in top of letters, what gives you this nice result.

If you like "psychodelic" style, so you can make a blue fire text. This one was made having as input the image generated by fire text effect with the "Flame" font as showed above. To get it, just go to [Image Editor] / [Colorization] and apply the first blue colorization effect to that image. If you prefer, make fire in a different color: this tool offers you all the main hues.

Now let's try the other fire effect avaliable. Go to [Procedural Text Effects] / [Fire] and select the effect showed below.

Apply the second fire effect over an "AB" text using "Flame" font in big size to get this:

The font used gave us some nice flames, but if you want an even more dramatic look, you can improve the contrast of the above image. Using P2P Image Editor I changed the contrast in +40% getting this kind of "devil fire" result:

Going back to the first fire effect, now we will get, with few effort, the more realistic image. We will draw a fire text with big flying fading flames using a Picture to People pattern effect.

Since I will need to draw a little bit, I will use Windows Paint (you can use any trivial free drawing program). Start a new image (I used a 200x250 size) and draw in its bottom a big black "A". I have used Arial font, but you can use the one you prefer. I suggest a thin font face.

If you wanna use a font you don't have in your computer, don't panic. The "Preview Text" button of any P2P text effect show you the pure black and white text you typed in the size and font you have chosen. You can copy this image to clipboard and paste it as a part of your main image in Paint (or other desktop software).

Here I suppose you have an image like that:

Now, draw in the top parte some flame sketches like you can see below. Try to make your strokes with some subtle curves. The thick lines will show the correct direction and the thin lines will help to get fading. Save it as a jpg file to be uploaded to Picture to People server.

Go to [Pattern Effects] / [Fire] and apply the first fire effect to get something like this:

The result have dramatic big flying flames as desired. This approach can be used with a lot of different fonts or even with images that are not text.

For all examples in this tutorial, the closure option was used only when explicitly told.

Maybe you need to test several different drawings (patterns) until achieve the result you are looking for. When you get a result, look at it and see the parts you don't like. So try to correct the same parts in pattern to make a better final image.

[ Posted by Leonardo]

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