This effect gives text that appears to be made out of flame. To do this technique, you will first need to download the texture called realfire.jpg. The texture is actually 480 x 480 pixels. A reduced version is shown below. To get the real file, click on the fire texture and download it.

Open a new file, 250 pixels wide by 150 high, 16 million colors, with a white background. Select Black as your foreground color and add some text. Use a font with some flow to it. Some fonts look better if you use italics. Here I've used a font called Invitation, 72 point Bold. After you've added your text, go to the Selections menu and choose Promote to Layer.

Next choose the retouching tool (the little pointing finger.) In the Controls palette set it to Smudge, and under Brush Tip set the shape to Round, the Size to 13, the opacity to 50, the Hardness to 0, the Density to 100, and the Step to 1. Use the Smudge tool to make little flames by pulling up. Be sure to roughen all the edges. When you're done, it should look something like this:

Now we add the flames. Open up realfire.jpg in PSP and in the Edit menu, select Copy. Now return to your project and in the Edit menu, select Paste: As a New Selection. This should fill your entire window, but don't worry. Using the Move tool, adjust the flames so that the part you like best is directly over your text. Now go to the Selections menu, and again choose Promote to Layer.

Next, to get the effect we want, go into the Layers menu and choose Layer Properties. Set the Blend Mode of your new layer to 'Lighten'. Your text should appear filled with your flame. At this point you might want to save your graphic as a PSP file, which preserves the layers. This is also a very convenient place to change the background color to best match your page. This can be done by simply changing the color of the Background Layer.

Now we want to sharpen it up a bit and prepare to save as a transparent GIF. First go to the Layers menu and choose Merge:Merge All. Then go to Image,Sharpen: Sharpen more.

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.

There is one very interesting variation that you might want to try. When you adjust the Blend mode of your fire layer, try setting it to 'Hard light'. This embeds your text in a wall of flame.