I make all of my own art for story forum title pages and what will ultimately be book covers. One thing I learned early was how text as an image layer (vs. as text) could be improved significantly. Here's one type that some of you might find useful for your own. Though I'm hesitant to show the whole image (not appropriate for here), I wanted neon and paint signage on a wall.
* To make neon, find a rounded font, type out what you want and save it as an image.
* Edit the image by breaking the font like neon is made in pieces.
* Change the line font to white, then add successive outlines of ever darker shades of the color you want the neon to be (if you zoom in you can see the outlines...zoomed out they all blend).
* Overlay the background with a dark shade (on a separate layer).
* Under the neon layer and above the background & shade layer, add a translucent color in the shade of the neon.
* Erase the shade under each letter to make the background lit.
It should come out like this:
K2
. I had an assignment for digital painting in my digital imaging class years ago in college, but the professor never explained what digital painting was, let alone how to do it, so I just bluffed my way through to an 'A' with a bunch of abstract work 
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