you could just set the background to the text element as a picture, e.g. in css
div.your_element_name
{
background-image:url(
http://your_image.jpg);
}
then put the text in <div class="your_element_name"> tags.
That will do what I think you want without layers or any of that crap and it will work fine in text based browsers/screen readers.
Some variation on this should do pretty much whatever you are looking for.
also: mic, doesn't photoshop automaticaly flatten the image when you save to 'raster' formats