Lightning Text

1. Create a new 165x165 pixel document and name it Lightning Text. Now press D fill the document (with Black). Now the next part is really up to you. You can just put down some basic text, any color as long as it's not really bright (for now). So I'm starting out with text that looks like the image below.

If you want to do it around your own text, just create a new layer, then, create a horizontal type mask, select a color you want (try to make it darker color for now) and fill the selection, then deselect.

2. Now load the selection from your layer with the text on it (probably layer 2). Now expand that selection with settings [Expand by: 2-3 pixels]. Now show channels. Then create a new channel. Press D to set white as the foreground color (if not already done), then fill the selection (with white) and deselect. Create a new channel, then add stained glass with settings [Cell Size: 14, Border Thickness: 2, Light Intensity: 0]. Now this stained glass effect will be your lightning. If your doing really big text or small text, you will want to make your Cell Size and Border Thickness larger or smaller respectively. But always leave your light intensity as 0.

Your channels window should look something like this:

3. Now load the selection of your 'alpha 2' channel (the stained glass channel). Now with that selection active, hold Ctrl + Alt + Shift, and click on your 'alpha 1' channel. Now your stained glass selection should be only active over your text, so now we can show layers. Create a new layer, and fill the selection with any color (it won't matter).

4. Now change the fill percentage opacity to 0%. We will be applying some layer styles for the lightning/electrical effect. First apply an outer glow with these settings;

Then apply an inner glow with these settings:

Then ripple the lightning, and ripple it once more (2x in total). Then apply a gaussian blur with settings [Radius: 0.4-0.8]. PLEASE NOTE** If you are doing lightning on really big text, or smaller text, you will have to adjust the outer glow and inner glow settings accordingly, as well as adjust the gaussian blur accordingly. Have fun with this tutorial.