This technique gives text an interesting cartoonish 3-D appearance. I think it resembles something that you might find in a comic book. Start by opening a new file, 400 x 150 pixels, 16 million colors with a white background. Now lay down some text. I think this effect looks best with a font that has a lot of angles. Here I've used a font called Klingon Blade, 72 pt bold.

Now go to the Selections menu:Invert. The area outside of your text should now be highlighted. In the Image menu choose Effects: Chisel. Check 'Transparent', and set the size to 12. Your text should become nicely 3D.

This is just a bit dark, so we're going to lighten it a little. In the Colors menu, select Adjust:Hue/Saturation/Lightness. Set the Hue and the Saturation to 0, and the Lightness to 50.

Okay, here's where we start to get that cartoonish appearance. In the Image menu, go to Edge: Enhance More. This will give a bunch of lines and interesting details.

To complete the full effect and bring out more detail, choose Colors:Posterize.

Personally, I like the white highlights. But if you think that they make your graphic look messy, set your background color to white and use the replacer brush to fill in the highlights with your text color. I would recommend setting the brush size to a large value, such as 100.

As a variation, set your foreground to a color that contrasts with your text before you use the Replacer brush.

To finish, set your background color to white, and then go to the Color menu and select Set Palette Transparency. Set the Palette Transparency to the Current Background Color, and then save your file as a transparent GIF.