Don't know if these are the sort of text effects you were thinking about. Actually not even sure if you'd call them text effects or effects on text? (Slightly self promo-ish, but it's what I had available).

I, like you, tend to do most of my text work in Photoshop, but there are many things can be done in Painter. Have yet to dive in very much with P6 text effects, but will have to check it out now.

Someone once asked how to use liquid metal in a text selection on another Painter forum. As far as I know, it can't be done, but you can get some pretty good looking metal text effects, (and others) in Painter. Will try to get together a small toot to post soon.

B