Frozen text effect in Photoshop

Published on December 14, 2022

Create a frozen text with icicles

In this blog I’ll show you a super fast and simple method to create a frozen text effect with icicles in Adobe Photoshop.

Rather watch the video with instructions? Click here or scroll down to the end of this page. Let’s get started!

Step 1: Create file and text

Create a new file. It doesn’t matter what size your file is. If you want to add the text to another photo or image, open that file instead of creating a new one.

Select the horizontal type tool. Pick a font and make the text white. Type your text. After you did that, click on the ✓ icon.

Press CTRL+T to activate free transform. Right click on the text and select ‘rotate 90° clockwise‘.

Your text is now rotated. If the text is too small, you can make it a little bigger. Then click on the ✓ icon again.

Step 2: Frozen text effect

Right click on the text layer and select ‘rasterize type‘. Make sure the text layer is selected, then navigate to ‘Filter > Stylize > Wind‘.

Method: Wind
Direction: From the right

Click OK. The effect is very subtle now. To enhance the effect, navigate to ‘Filter > Wind‘ (the top option).

You will see that the icicles get longer after doing this.

To make the effect even more prominent, repeat this (Filter > Wind). If you don’t like it, simply press CTRL+Z to undo this and go one step back.

When you’re happy with the effect, press CTRL+T again. Right click on the text, this time select ‘rotate 90° counter clockwise‘ to rotate it back. You can now resize the text and pick the correct position.

And that’s how you create this frozen text effect in Adobe Photoshop!