Photoshop® CS4 Bible

22.1. Wood burn effect

This example demonstrates how a few creatively placed layer styles can be used to create the look of type burned into wood — sort of like something you'd find on a ranch, or in a frontier town in the Old West. As a bonus, you'll also learn a quick way to create your own wood texture in Photoshop, which you'll use as a base to burn the text into.

1. Create a new document. Choose FileNew and enter your document's dimensions, or use one of the provided document presets and click OK. I chose 1024 × 768 from the Web presets for this example.

2. Create a new blank layer and fill it with a yellowish-brown color. To create a new layer, click the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. This layer will form the base color of your wood texture. Choose a color that suits the type of wood you prefer — maybe a pale birch, or a more orange-ish beech — it's up to you.

   I'm a firm believer in keeping the layers in my Photoshop documents well organized by naming them descriptively, and grouping them into folders as necessary. With that in mind, rename your base layer by double-clicking the layer's name, and changing it to wood base.

3. Start creating the wood grain by adding some noise. With your wood base layer selected, choose FilterNoiseAdd Noise. The Noise filter adds random ...