Desperately need help with making a transparent stroke

[Amy25436015qzb5]

I am new to photoshop and all week have been trying to figure out how to make a transparent stroke around this graphic letter "A".  I am going nuts!!!  I am trying to make a t-shirt design and so this design needs to have a transparent background (the t-shirt will be colored...probably red).  I want to over lap the A with the W & the Y (all three letters in white) but there needs to be a little space between them so that you can distinguish one from the other.  If anybody has any ideas I would greatly appreciate it.  Thank you in advance.

P.S. I am using a mac

-Amy

[Myra Ferguson · Accepted solution]

One way that you could make the transparent area around the A would be to create layer masks on the other letters based on the A. Here's how:

1.  Load the selection of the A by either Ctrl (PC)/Command (macOS) + clicking the thumbnail of the A in the Layers panel or going to Select > Load Selection... and selecting that layer.
2. Go to Select > Modify > Expand... and enter the value in pixels for the space you want as a buffer around the A.
3. Select the Y layer.
4. Go to Layer > Layer Mask > Hide Selection...
5. Repeat for the W layer.

[Amy25436015qzb5]

Myra~
I love you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It worked. I cannot tell you how much i appreciate you. Thank you! Thank
You so much!!!!!
Hallelujah!

[Amy25436015qzb5]

Can you help me again.  I am pretty much trying to do the same thing as before but instead of wanting to create a transparent background around one letter it needs to be around 5 letters...but its not working.  

[Elizabeth283973672ly5]

I realize you asked this question 7 months ago, but in case you are still looking for a way to do this:

1. Create your top text layer. (Layer 1)

2. Duplicate your top layer. (Layer 2)

3. Add your stroke to your bottom layer (Layer 2). 

4. Right click your bottom layer (Layer 2) and select 'Rasterize LAYER STYLE'. (This will prevent you from being able to further alter your text.)

5. Right click your bottom layer again (Layer 2) and select Blending Options. Under Advanced Blending, slide the Opacity to 0. Then change the knockout option to Shallow.

That should do it. 

[barbara_a]

A transparent stroke is trickly. Try this.

Create the letters.

Add a stroke effect to the 'A'

Right click on the stroke effect and choose Create Layer. That puts the stroke on a separate layer, but it is actually a filled.

To remove the fill on the separate stroke layer, load a selection of the A layer. (You can Command click the layer thumbnail.)

Target the stroke layer and delete  the selection so that you have only the stroke, not a filled letter.

Load a selection of the stroke.

Target the A layer and add a layer mask.

With the mask targeted, Command-i to inverse the mask.

You can delete the stroke layer now.

Command click on the mask to load a selection of the mask.

Target the W layer and add a layer mask.