Create this gory text effect in time for Halloween using a free font, gradient set and Photoshop's built in tools.

Resources:

Cold Night for Alligators font from dafont.com

Autumn Gradients download here

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Step 1

Open a new file using the following settings:

Fill the background with black

Step 2

Select the Type tool, Cold Night for Alligators font, foreground colour white, size 200pt

Type your required text all on one layer

Right click on the text layer and click Rasterize Type

NOTE: Try out each letter in both upper and lower case – they are all upper case letters, but each letter has two different designs.

Rename the layer ‘text’

Duplicate the layer, name the duplicate ‘gory’

Step 3

Double click on the gory layer in the layers palette to bring up the blending options and apply the following Color Overlay and Bevel and Emboss settings:

Step 4

With the gory layer active

Filter>Distort>Diffuse Glow – apply the following settings:

Step 5

Double click on the text layer in the layers palette to bring up the blending options and apply the following Color Overlay, Stroke and Outer Glow settings:

Step 6

Duplicate the background layer

Filter>Render>Lens Flare – apply the following settings:

Filter>Blur>Motion Blur – apply the following settings:

Reduce the layer opacity to 85%

Step 7

Create a new layer above the gory layer

Merge the gory layer and the empty layer together to rasterize the effects

Duplicate the merged layer three times

Name these layers (from the top) ‘gory1’ ‘gory2’ ‘gory3’ and ‘gory4’

Step 8

Make the gory1 layer active

Filter>Render>Lighting Effects – apply the settings shown below

Then select the Eraser tool and erase the parts of text as described in the screenshot below:

The next 3 screenshots show the Lighting Effects settings and the parts of the text to be erased on the other gory layers:

Step 9

Double click on any of the gory layers in the layers palette to bring up the blending options and apply the following Gradient Overlay settings:

Copy and paste the layer style to each of the gory layers

The finished project:

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I hope you enjoyed this tutorial - as usual, you can play around with the settings, the filters used, the colours, etc. This effect doesn't have to look like blood, by using blues, you could make it look like water or any other liquid you want.

Please leave any comments you may have, or links to your results of the tutorial in the comments section below.