Write your name - make sure everything is spelt properly, the font and colour is as you want them. Once you rasterise the layers, you can’t change those.
Put on a drop shadow and white stroke.
Rasterise the layer. You can do this in the layer menu or ctrl-click on the layer in the layer palette and select rasterise from the box that appears.
Now duplicate that layer twice - ctrl-J
I call the layers 1, 2 and 3 so that I know which one I’m supposed to have showing when I animate them. To do that, double click on the layer name and it will become a box for you to type in.
Now with layer 3 selected, go into the filter menu and choose noise -> add noise.
I usually use any number between 9 and 15 as some colours need an extra boost to sparkle better.
Check the gaussian and monochromatic boxes and click OK.
Now select layer 2 and do ctrl-F which adds the noise (sparkles) to that layer.
Do the same with layer 1.
Now switch off the eyes on layers 2 and 3 and click on the background layer.
Jump to Image Ready using the button at the bottom of the left tool bar -
- or by using shift-ctrl-M.
If your animation palette isn’t open, go up to “window” in the top option bar and click on animation and it will appear for you.
Select a time by clicking on the arrow beside the 0 sec. I usually use 0.1 seconds for sparkly names. Make sure the forever is checked.
Now duplicate that frame twice by clicking on the wee box.
Change the settings in each frame by clicking on them and then switching the eyes on/off as follows - I always leave the background layer eye open.
In frame 1 - layer 1 eye open, 2 & 3 shut.
In frame 2 - layer 2 eye open, 1 & 3 shut.
In frame 3 - layer 3 eye open, 1 & 2 shut.
Here's what the Image Ready layer palette looks like when you do those: (these were edited in later which explains the pink text in the thumbnails)
Now press the play button
and watch your document to make sure it’s sparkling properly. If it seems to be stuttering, go back and check that you don’t have 2 frames with the same layer eyes on next to one another.
When you’re happy with it, save optimised for web as a gif. If it doesn’t give you the gif option, go up to the window menu and click on “optimise”. Choose gif from the drop down box in that.
In CS3 you need to do "save for web and devices" which will bring up a window where you can change the file type to a gif using the drop down box. Here's the tutorial that Melanie wrote for how to do glitter in CS3 - http://messageboards.ivillage.com/iv-prsigshownew?msg=2362.1HTH
