This technique will give your text a really infectious, radioactiveappearance. It should work nicely with any wide font. But don't expectyour result to bear any real resemblance to the lettering you start with.
Start out by opening a new file, 400 pixels wide by 200 high, witha white background and 16 million colors. Set your foreground color togray (RGB 192/192/192). Choose a font with some width to it and add sometext. Here I've used Arial Black, 48 pt. Deselect the text by hitting [Shift]N.
Now select the Retouch Tool (the little pointing finger). ChooseSmudge and set the size to 20, the brush shape to round, the opacity to80, and the paper texture to None. Pull oozing drops down from the bottomsof each letter. Then use the tool to deform any straight edges that remain.
Next we add some three dimensionality to the project. First setthe foreground color to dark gray (RGB 128/128/128). Then use the selecttool with a tolerance set to 35 to reselect the lettering. To select allthe letters at once, hold down the shift key while you click on each one.Once you have all the text selected, go to the Image Menu, Special Effects:Cutout. Set the opacity to 180, the blur to 36, the shadow color to foreground,and the vertical and horizontal offsets to -3.
Okay, we have some shadows, now we need some highlights. Repeatthe cutout procedure, but this time set the shadow color to white and thevertical and horizontal offsets to 3.
Now the image needs a bit more depth. Go to the color menu, Histogram:Equalize.
This is a bit too dark now, so we adjust it using the luminescencesetting. Go to the Color Menu, Adjust : Hue, Saturation, Luminescence.Set the Hue to 0, the Saturation to 100 and Luminescence to 10.
Now we're ready for some color. Go to the Color Menu, Adjust: RGB.Set Red and Blue to 0, and Green to 100.
We're almost there; all we need now is the glowing slime. Go tothe Window menu and choose Duplicate. This should open up a new file identicalto the one we've been working with. Using this new file, Go to Colors,Adjust: Brightness and Contrast. Set the Brightness to 0, and the Contrastto 75.
Now we're Going to cut and paste a bit. Go to the Edit Menu: Copy.Set your background color to white, and then return to the Edit Menu. Thistime select Paste as a Transparent Image. This will add a second copy ofyour test to the graphic. Don't worry, we're almost done with this file.Now go back to Edit, and Copy again. You can close the new file now andreturn to the original one. Set your Background color to Black. Go to theEdit Menu one last time, and select Paste as a Transparent Image. The brightgreen Slime should now appear in your graphic. Position it atop the originallettering and there you have it. To use the image on your webpage, setthe background color to white, and save as a transparent GIF file.
