New Tutorial : Check out how to make a Man of Fire in Photoshop.

Sometimes you'll want to make your text look like it was written with a marker on real paper (or some other surface), and the fonts that look like handwriting are not accurate enough for you. Fortunately, Photoshop has a few tools that will help give your text a nice, somewhat distressed inky effect for a realistic 'marker' effect.

You can get some handwriting fonts here that you can use to follow along with and create your own samples. Just remember that you'll want to choose one that isn't too choppy or blocky for a better end result.

I've included a jpeg as an attachement on the last page of this tutorial. If you simply can't wait to see what the output will be - it should look something like this (depending on your chosen font style ) :

1. Start with a good handwriting-style font; the less computer-generated it looks, the better. Type your test, apply whatever distortions, et cetera, you'd like, and rasterize your layer. We'll be using black text for this example, but you can alter the color later.
2. Choose Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur... Be careful! Even for a large image you won't want to blur your text by more than a pixel or two. The goal is to create a slight halo of fuzz around solid, readable text, not to actually make your text seem blurry.
3. Duplicate your layer of text.
4. Choose Filter -> Stylize -> Wind... The default settings should suffice.
5. Merge your two layers of text together.
6. Choose Filter -> Distort -> Ripple... The exact amount of distortion you choose to apply here will depend on how large your image is and where on the Canvas your text is located, but you will want to keep it subtle; the goal is to apply a bit of randomness and shakiness to your 'handwriting', not to actually see ripples.

You may be done here, if you are simply looking to replicate the marker look on a clean background. If you're trying to make the marker texture appear as if you actually wrote or drew on the underlying layer, continue with the steps on the next page of this tutorial.

If you're trying to make the marker texture appear as if you actually wrote or drew on the underlying layer, continue with the steps below :

• Change the text layer's blending mode to Soft Light.
• Duplicate it two to four times, each time leaving the blending mode on Soft Light.

These individual layers may be adjusted for color and opacity as you see fit, to create the effect that suits your particular image and your personal taste. Below is a sample output of what this effect can do. Your mileage may very as you are probably using a different font :