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 [Ctrl]D.
Now select the Retouch Tool (the little pointing finger). ChooseSmudge and set the size to 20, the brush shape to round, the Opacity to80, Density to 100, Step to 1, Hardness to 50, and the paper texture toNone. Pull oozing drops down from the bottoms of each letter. Then usethe tool to deform any straight edges that remain.
Next we add some three dimensionality to the project. Thenuse the select tool with a tolerance set to 35 to reselect the lettering.To select all the letters at once, hold down the shift key while you clickon each one. Once you have all the text selected, go to Selections: Float.Next, in the Image Menu, select Effects: Cutout. Set the opacity to 70the blur to 14, the shadow color to medium gray (RGB 128, 128, 128), andthe vertical and horizontal offsets to -3. be sure that the Fill with Colorbox is Unchecked.
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 light for the effect we want, so we're going todarken it a bit. Go to Color, Adjust: Hue, Saturation, Lightness. Set Hueand Saturation to 0 and Lightness to -50.
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. The text should even still be selectedin the new window. Using this new file, Go to Colors, Adjust: Brightnessand Contrast. Set the Brightness to -5, and the Contrast to 75.
Now go to Image,Blur: Blur. This evens out the colors a bit. Next, we're going to cut and paste a bit. Go to the Edit Menu: Copy.Set your background color to black, and then return the original image. Go to the Edit Menu and select Paste as a Transparent Selection. The bright green Slime should now appear in your graphic. Positionit atop the original lettering and there you have it. To use the imageon your webpage, set the background color to white, and save as a transparentGIF file.
