render and rasterize

I've been viewing some photoshop tutorials for some time, and applying some ps6 tutorials to ps7, but one thing I recognize is whenever the tutorial says render the text, I can't locate where is that render button? am i going to the filter and render or does the tutorial meant to rasterize the text layer? is render and rasterize the same?

i believe they are the same function. what effect are you trying to do?

Yeah, it sounds like they mean rasterize, which is a process you have to go through before you can apply any filters to a text layer (which, as you probably know, removes your ability to edit it as text). You can do that through Rasterize->Type, or when you try to apply the filter, it'll give you a dialog that will tell you you have to rasterize the layer first; just hit ok, and it'll do it for you before applying the filter.