In this tutorial I will show you how make an Inner Glow (from edge, there is also a variation: from center).

01. Start with your text, i used a black canvas of 600x280px and the font is Sans Bold 160px, Spacing -29 in grey #808080



02. Alpha select your text and save it to a channel (we will need this later): 'Select' -> 'Save To Channel'

03. create a new transparent layer on top and name it 'Inner Glow'

04. Alpha select your text, or use your saved channel and choose 'Channel To Selection' (same thing)
05. depending on how big you want your Inner Glow, Shrink the Selection or leave it as it is

06. then Invert Selection!

07. fill with color - i used white, and Gaussian Blur - i used 16px - no shrink
from my experience the Blur will have a range of approximately half its pixel value - so a Blur of 16 will spread about 8px inside your text selection - but thats just a rule of thumb

08. now almost all of your canvas has the color of the Inner Glow, minus the bit inside the selection, where the text is



how can we know if we like what we did, when we cant see the final Glow properly ?
here is a trick: go to your saved channel and turn up the 'Fill Opacity' to 100% and then turn on the channel by clicking on the eye
now everything except the text will be black (because the default mask color is black)
we can even change the color of the channel mask, by clicking on the colored rectangle, in case we have a black BG and black text
so for the sake of this tutorial, i changed the mask to green.



now you can see how your final Inner Glow will look
when you are happy turn of the mask - if not 'Undo' and apply other values of Shrink selection and Gaussian Blur, till you are satisfied

09. now we want to get rid of everything on the Inner Glow Layer except for the glowing shine thats inside of the selected text
10. so we Alpha Select the text or or use the Saved Channel and choose 'Channel To Selection'

11. Invert Selection

12.
a) Edit -> Cut
or
b) apply a LayerMask 'Selection' + 'Invert Mask'
or
c) for the quick bunnies among us: dont select your text at all - choose LayerMask -> Channel





13. play with Layermode and Opacity - the Mode 'Screen' is the obvious choice for light colors - or leave it as it is

14. to finalize the piece i added a shadow to the text (the base text selection filled with black and blurred by 5) and a gradient to the background. Also i tweaked my glow with a curve so that it expands a bit.



EDIT: this is a revised version with new improved pictures. and new PDF added in next post

Thank you Esper...I attached a new revised pdf below for whoever wants it

i liked playing with the inner glow, it's fun to see what different effects you can get depending on how you make the glow layer. thanks for the tut, esper, and thanks for the pdf, molly!

thanks AnMal, it seemed all the predecessor text effects tutorials i did, where too complex, so i tried to show one thing only this time

your result looks like neon, very nice and fresh
i love seeing unexpected versions from different members !

very nice AnMal, should be called outer glow

with two G'MIC filters on top

carried away, Graechan ?

I learned a lot about channels in this tut....thanks, Esper. Followed along but then added a drop shadow for no reason, just to give it some depth I guess.

that happens to me all the time, too, Graechan

nice to hear 2-ton
once you understand the basic techniques it all begins to flow and you start to add more layers just to make your effect even better

in the first post i showed you how to make an 'Inner Glow From Edge' and for the sake of completeness i will show how to make an 'Inner Glow From Center'.
This is fairly obvious:

01. type your text
02. alpha to select
03. shrink selection (10 seems like a good value most of the time)



04. fill selection with color on a new transparent layer and deselect



05. Gaussian Blur (i used 10) - as a rule of thumb: the blur stretches out about half the x/y pixel value



06. set Mode ('Screen' comes to mind, but also 'Grain Merge', 'Lighten Only' or 'Dodge') and adjust opacity
apply some Contour curves, depending on the effect you want to achieve



07. decorate some more
sometimes its nice to put a second Inner Glow in a lighter color (or white) on top of the first one, but this time shrank a bit more, to get a stronger 3D effect
thats what i did in the example below

What did you do to get all the artifacts or fuzziness around it

Spread 5, molly
you can also try the Mode - 'Dissolve', but Spread is better

Thanks, I like that effect. I have never used spread...where is it?

Filters - > Noise -> Spread