Hey Photoshop guys.........

[ZONA]

I made this piece today for a local 4x4 club. I never went to school for this kinda stuff and self taught myself. Was wondering if there are any photoshop/Illustrator guru's out there that wouldn't mind sharing some ideas and stuff. I know there are tons of tutorials out there and I've sifted through hundreds, thus picking up some tips and tricks but have yet to find one that I really would like to know. In the below image, I pasted a picture of fire inside the text. But what I really wanted to do some have flaming light burst through the test out at ya, sorta 3D I guess.

I tried the wind left, wind right, rotate, more wind and that was kinda neat but that was more of an electrical look and it wasn't coming out at ya. I also tried the stock extrude filter with CS2 but looks horible. I have almost every filter out there so that's no problem. But I've gone over all of them and I can't find anything that would do that.

Any ideas how I can do that?

Also - I've read probably 20 tuts on how to make steel texture but they're all the same damn tut it seems and it's pretty vanilla. I know you can use grunge brushes to make it dirty or rusty but that's tuff. I really really need a good tut on realistic metal. What I got below looks so generic I want to puke. Thanks again

http://members.cox.net/azhelton3/ZukiArt/ZOA.gif

[BABronco]

I don't know much of anything about photoshop. However that does look pretty good. And your avatar along with your sig is awesome!

[snowspot66]

you might try increasing the size of the metalic texture you've got there, just making i tmuch larger can do wonders for appearance, i'm assuming you want a rusted and dirty metal since it's so heavily texture, i'll have to play around a bit, most of the stuff I do in PS is more along the lines of painting

[Tredici]

There's a whole tutorial topic in the Off Topic Forum.

[DarkHorse30]

nice work, ditto the avatar (TD also rules). Your design sense is top drawer.

[Rock Chalk]

You want a flame burst? On what part? You want it coming toward the viewer? I saw a tutorial on that not too long ago that may be exactly what you are looking for.

Let me see if I can dig it up.

[Rock Chalk]

http://www.absolutecross.com/tutorials/photoshop/effects/4way-fire/

I dont like the way it ends up, but Im sure you can tweak the steps a bit to get it the way you want.