100 Styles 7 - Gradients - Fire

Fire effect (Click the image to see it bigger)

Today I was playing around with the default gradients and the Outer Glow effect when I came upon this effect. Or rather the beginning of it as there is more to the above image than the Outer Glow. Read on for info on how I created the above effect and to be able to download the style for yourself to experiment with.

Fire effect

Drop Shadow settings (Click the image to see it bigger)

Increased the size a bit, but apart from that I don't think I've changed any settings here, but it still interacts nicely with the Outer Glow.

Inner Shadow settings

The main things to notice here are the small Size and lowered Opacity that helps make the Inner Shadow more subtle.

Outer Glow settings

 Feel free to experiment with the other settings here, but the main things are: The Blend Mode is Overlay as that gives the best effect in this case (found by trial and error), the Size is relatively large to make sure it's a big, fuzzy effect, and the gradient (one of the default, it was actually when I looked through the available gradients that I got the idea to do a fire effect).

Inner Glow settings

A white inner glow, with both Choke and Size set to 0, mostly to get a stroke, but the Stroke effect doesn't work well on things which aren't text or shapes. Also, it's a bit more subtle than an actual stroke, which is nice.

Gradient Overlay settings

Here I've changed two things from the default, the Blend Mode to Hard Light (though checking through the options again as I write this I find that Vivid Light gives a pretty nice effect as well), and I've shifted the Angle a little to match the angle of the text.

--> Click here to download the style <--

Notes:

• This effect only works on backgrounds which are near 50% grey, a little saturation is ok, but not much more. If you want to use it against another color I suggest you use the Normal Blend Mode on the Gradient Overlay and edit the gradient a bit. (Other Blend Modes may work as well depending on the color/colors.)
• Speaking of Layer Styles, don't miss this weeks episode of Photoshop UserTV, where there is a tip about how you can apply multiple Layer Styles to the same layer...