How to Create Star Trek-Style Text Light Ray Effect in Photoshop or After Effects?

Eye Candy 7 has a nice extrusion effect, and can do tapers.  Whatever way you go, group the different type layers as a single Smart Object.  I can't see Radial Blur maintaining any sort of integrity over that sort of distance, but if you try, place your Smart Object in the center of the canvas.

The extrusion is very clean in the above example.  EC7 uses the object's colour for the extrusion, so if you break that up with some sort of texture, it would be nearer to the Star Trek image you showed us. This is Filter > Texture > (I think) grain.  Note you can't add this directly to the Smart Object.  You have double click to open the SO in a new window.  Rasterize the type and combine to one layer, and then add the filter > texture.

You'd do this to a copy of the SO which you'll place below the untextured text like below. 

Star Trek Fonts 🖖 FontSpace

Good luck, and show us what you create

When trying to decided whether to use Photoshop or After Effects, the main question is are you creating an animation/video or just a still image? If still, then Photoshop. The effect that you are seeing would be the result of a blur. There are several different types of blurs available under the Filters menu in Photoshop. A couple will create this type of effect.

The first is Radial Blur. You'll want to duplicate your text layer (or whatever conent you are working with) so that you have an unblurred copy on top to keep things solid. Then for the layer underneath, apply radial blur with a Method of Zoom and the Amount set to whatever creates the distance you are looking for. Unfortuantely, this is a really old piece of Photoshop, so you can't get a live preview of you settings, it will take some trial and error. I've found that the copy layer with the blur applied should also be moved and scaled down to really match the appearance in Star Trek. 

The second option is Path Blur in the Blur Gallery. The Gallery blurs are the more modern ones with better controls, live preview, etc. The Speed setting is the same as Amount from Radial blur, adjust this to create the distance you are looking for. Also, turn off the Centered Blur option so that you don't have to move the layer to line things up. You'll want to create additional paths to make the tapered effect. 

While Motion Blur seems like it would make sense, it creates a linear blur, so you don't get the tapered effect that creates prespective.

There is additional information available at the following links: 

• https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/blur-gallery.html#path-blur
• https://www.adobe.com/learn/photoshop/web/add-motion-blur-effects?locale=en&learnIn=1