In Photoshop CS6, the new version of Photoshop, you can use special cropping tool and you are done, but that doesn't mean you cannot achieve the same result with older versions.
For a lot of fonts there is not an Italic type option available by default, but there is still a neat Faux Italic Photoshop option that can turn any font into an Italic type.
If you like the Lords of the Rings movie trilogy, then you might also like this Photoshop tutorial, where we will make a dramatically red sky on a random photograph.