Create a Neon Glow Effect in Photoshop

hey there and welcome to phlearn my name is aaron nace i'm going to show you how to create an awesome graphic glowing effect in photoshop [Music] so let's get started here in photoshop with our sample image you can actually download this on phlearn.com just follow the link right down below so i'm going to start off by going to my tools right over here you can see i have my rectangle tool we're just going to go in this case to our triangle tool of course you can use whatever tool that you want i'm going to go ahead and click and drag here with my tool uh making sure i hold shift and that's going to keep my aspect ratio and then if you need to you can hold the space bar and that's going to allow you to make this larger or smaller something like that looks pretty good good that's going to create this triangle on a new layer now i'm going to flip this upside down so let's hit controller command t we're going to right click and i'm going to go to flip vertical there we go and hit enter and then i'm going to just use my move tool to kind of just move this right down there that looks pretty good maybe let's make a little bit bigger controller command t and we're just going to make that just a little bit bigger and bring this here basically the idea is that i want to make this triangle uh kind of encompass my subject it's going to cut out my subject but i do want his hair to kind of like come through the top i think it's going to be a cool effect so first thing we need to do is kind of expand our image just a little bit so let's hit c for the crop tool and then i'm just going to click on my left edge and drag that out and on our right edge we're going to drag that out too and hit this checkbox right up here at the top there we go now i need the background to be black so i'm going to go ahead and click here on my base layer we're going to grab our adjustment layers and go down to where it says solid color so let's go to a solid color and i'm gonna go all the way to black and then we're just gonna put that underneath our subject all right that looks pretty good now our triangle here we can actually make this whatever color we want so if you double click on your triangle you can see you can change the color here there we go or you can simply go back to your shape tool and then change the fill color and the stroke color in this case we're going to keep the fill at nothing so there's nothing inside of it as you can see but the stroke is going to be this green color and i think that green actually looks pretty cool because we have some green in our image now i will say when i chose this image i wanted an image that was kind of backlit from both the left and the right so i could use this lighting with the triangle to interact with my subject so you can see there's not a lot of light in the front of my subject it's mostly coming from the side and from the other side so that's going to make it look more realistic just kind of make the effect look cooler in general okay let's go ahead i'm going to just hit controller command t let's resize our triangle just a little bit i want to just put it right in about the area that we want fantastic now i can actually use the triangle itself to create a layer mask for my subject so i'm going to hold ctrl or command and click here on the triangle layer there we go and you're going to see it's just going to turn it into a selection i've got the little marching ants now that it's a selection let's go ahead and click on our layer with our subject let's just go ahead and call this subject fantastic and i'm going to click on my layer mask icon right down here and that's going to simply turn my selection into a mask and it's going to only make it visible exactly where that triangle was visible okay now if you decide later you want to move your triangle that's totally okay you can just redo your layer mask you can see it doesn't take long now in this case i actually do want my subject hair to kind of stick out of that so we're going to click on our layer mask for our subject and i'm just going to work with my brush tool so let's hit b for the brush tool and i'm going to make my brush nice and small and i'm going to go ahead and paint white on my layer mask which is going to allow my subject's hair to kind of come out of the top of the triangle now you can see my subject is already on a black background if your subject is on a relatively complicated background that's totally okay you can just select out your subject by simply clicking on your layer mask and going to select and then down to select subject there you can see and it does a nice job selecting out your subject and then you could just use that as layer mask and then paint black on your background so let's go ahead and bring it back to where we're at now i think this is starting to look really good we do want to just go ahead and make it invisible right over here because there was a little bit of stuff in the background now the triangle itself i want to make invisible right over here as well as you can see it kind of overlaps my subject so let's click on this triangle i'm going to click on my layer mask icon just a white layer mask for now and then let's go ahead and use my lasso tool to start with so i'm going to hit l for my lasso tool we're just going to make a nice lasso selection right around there and then on the layer mask we're going to go to edit and down to fill and we're just going to fill this with black let's hit ok there there we go and then i'm going to come in here with my brush tool and just do a little bit of clean up there we go to make it really look like it kind of just you know goes right to the hair and then stops and then here a little bit of cleanup as well pretty cool so now i want to create a little bit of a glowing effect with this triangle and you can do that with layer effects but i actually kind of prefer to do this manually so let's just duplicate this layer i'm going to create a duplicate of the layer by clicking and dragging it to the new layer icon that duplicates the layer and now you can see it's actually a shape layer you can see right here this little icon denotes that it's a shape layer i just want it to be a regular layer so i'm going to create a new layer right above it a regular layer and then shift click the two of these layers and hit controller command e now you can see this is just a regular layer i don't have any shape layer icon it's a regular layer and if i move use my move tool you can see i can just move that around now that this is a regular layer what we're going to do is turn it into a smart object because i'm going to apply a blur to this let's go ahead and right click on this and we're going to go down to where it says convert to smart object so let's go ahead and convert that to a smart object the reason i'm doing this is i want to apply a blur and i can change this blur at any time so let's go to filter we're going to go to blur and i'm going to go to gaussian blur and this is really going to be the key to creating this glow effect because you can see as i create more of a gaussian blur i'm simply going to get more and more of effect so let's just do a little bit of a gaussian blur to start with i'm just going to zoom in and here we can see there's our before and after now i want to duplicate this a few times let's hit ctrl command j to duplicate that and then this time i can click on the galaxy blur and i can make it a little bit bigger all right let's hit ctrl command j again double click on my gaussian blur and we can make it a little bit bigger so this way i'm able to get a few different blurs on the edge and it's going to start to make it look a little bit more realistic and give me more more depth every time i do this so i highly recommend there we go just creating multiple versions of this and then because they're smart objects you can change these blurs at any time all right so here you can see there's the original one i'm going to put one more of those even there we go and i can change this gaussian blur simply by double clicking right here where it says gaussian blur there we go and i can kind of just tailor this however i want to that's looking really good so let's go ahead and zoom out here i just want to show you how these layers really make a difference so let's go ahead and turn these all off so we're back to just the original triangle and i'm going to turn these on and you can see how each one of these glows really makes a difference in that image it really adds to the glow so i recommend doing this in multiple layers and then you can just change the blur at any point in time fantastic now i am actually going to just duplicate this triangle in general let's click on the shape tool i'm going to go ahead here to my shape tool and then i'm going to stroke this just a little bit less there we go fantastic so this is going to be just a little bit like smaller than the other shape and i'm going to change this layer we're going to change this from a normal i'm going to go to color dodge okay and this is just going to allow me to color dodge right here in the middle there you can see it's a little bit too small right now let's go ahead and change my stroke to be a little bit bigger there we go something like that i want to give it like a strong bright core to that triangle okay so i'm pretty happy with that effect overall i think it looks great we can just go ahead and shift-click all those and group them together now you guys are going to be able to download this psd file as well on phlearn.com for free so just follow the link right down below you can see how we did this now i'm going to hit controller command j to duplicate that entire triangle group and then i'm going to just merge it with itself so controller command j and then i'm going to hit controller command e that's just going to allow me to merge it with itself so now all that stuff we can see is just in one layer okay so i'm really just kind of like adding to that glow effect now this is looking really good so what i want to start to do is bring in some of the color from this uh glowing triangle to my subject's face so let's go ahead and here we have our subject we're going to create a new layer right above my subject and in this case i'm actually going to grab a solid color fill layer all right we can make this any color i'll just show you it doesn't matter what color you start with you can change this at any time now on this layer itself we're going to right click and we're going to go down to where it says create a clipping mask i want this to only be visible where my subject is visible that's really important okay now we're going to change this layer from normal we're going to try color dodge to start with there we go so it's just going to like really show up in those highlights now color dodge works pretty well but we do need to change a color a couple things first i only want this to be visible in the highlights in fact let's just change it back to a normal blend mode there we go so we can show you how to make this only visible in the highlights we're going to double click right here on the layer itself and here when we see blend if we're going to use this bottom layer where it says underlying layer and here this little slider here i'm going to hold alt or option and separate these two out okay so let's go ahead and try that we'll bring this up here alt or option and i'm just going to start separating these two out and it's going to make this layer only visible in the highlights so it's literally making this layer disappear from the shadows which is what we want right because this is supposed to be like a lighting effect all right let's go ahead and try that so again this layer right now is set to a normal blend mode so if i turn this off or on you can see a normal blend mode but it's only visible in the highlights because we used blend if let's go ahead and change our layer blend modes we're going to go from normal let's try screen to start with okay we can go color dodge we're is going to add a little bit more color and we can even try things like overlay alright let's stick on overlay for now i'm going to change this color i want it to be a green color so let's double click there there we go i can use my eyedropper here to actually choose this color just to show you that you can choose whatever color you want to to start with it doesn't really matter that's why i chose a solid color fill layer so you can change this at any time there we go so now i have this green color overlay on my subject really cool but i still don't want it to be visible everywhere so let's click on our layer mask i'm going to hit controller command i to invert that and then with my brush tool we're just going to paint it white especially like right here right around the hair all right we're going to go ahead and make sure we have some of this visible on our subject's face where this green is supposed to be intersecting with the light on our subject remember earlier we said we wanted something that was lit from the side and this is why because we can bring some of this light from the triangle onto my subject's face okay and i got some cues from the colors that were actually in this image to begin with there we go that's starting to look really really good so now let's go ahead and see about adding more color to this image maybe i want to just change the color here on the left hand side so what we're going to do is over top of everything i'm going to grab a hue saturation adjustment layer okay i'm going to click on this colorize button now let's go ahead and bring our saturation up and start changing our colors you can see this just kind of colorizes everything it's kind of a quick and dirty way of doing this i'm going to click on my layer mask and hit controller command i to invert it and then now i can start colorizing this background and check this out i can do the hair a little bit while i get there okay just a little bit i want to do the hair mostly with like overlay layers because it's going to look a little bit more realistic there we go and i can start bringing this blue in here as well look at that really quick and easy way to do that and then right here above my subject let's go ahead and just grab another solid fill color layer okay let's just choose a blue color in this case fantastic we're going to go ahead and clip that to my subject just like we did before and make it only visible in the highlights there we go looking good we're going to change this from normal we're just going to go to an overlay fantastic and i can turn this off and on and you can see let's just make it a little bit darker so my color we're going to make darker and a little bit more saturated there we go now we're going to invert our layer mask by hitting ctrl or command i and then we're going to go ahead and paint this in so it's going to look like some of that blue color from the blue glow on the left hand side is actually overlapping the subject on the left hand side and then you know what just here at the very top we can just start having a little bit of fun with it let's just grab this green color here we're going to paint over our subject we're going to change this from normal to soft light okay so we're just going to get even more of this green effect going on right here on the right hand side side of our subject all right and i'm just going to grab this blue color and we're going to go ahead and grab this and paint it a little bit on the left hand side there as well and just go ahead and kind of paint that in there so you can see we can kind of add to this effect and really start that glow to come through and make it look like it's actually affecting the colors of my subject let's go ahead and i'm going to grab one more hue saturation adjustment layer okay we're going to click on this colorize icon and let's go ahead and bring our saturation up i'm going to hit controller command i to invert my layer mask and then now there we go let's go ahead and paint white on our layer mask we're going to paint white and this is just going to help me bring some of this blue color here from the left it's going to help me bring it on to the shirt of our subject there we go just by bringing a little bit of that blue color there it's going to kind of sell that effect a little bit more all right we want to just make it nice and patchy and blotchy with the hair to make it look like it's kind of visible in some areas and not in some other areas there we go that's looking really good let's go ahead and make it invisible from you know some of these highlights nice that's looking really cool so that colorize on the left hand side works really well let's go ahead and paint a little bit here and let's do something similar on the right hand side so i'm going to hit controller command j on that we're just going to go ahead and fill the layer mask with black and then well i need it to be white to see what i'm doing we're just going to double click here and we're going to change the hue to something that's green now i'm just choosing this green and the blue because i kind of like it and i think it works with my subject but obviously you guys can choose any color you want here and work with any type of image so i'm just kind of bringing in a colorize here at the very end and this is going to allow me to just kind of work with these colors here and bring everything together kind of make it look like the glow of that graphic outline is actually affecting my subject here we go a little bit of the hair bringing in there and i think that's looking really really cool all right so we can see that colorize just kind of like brought all the colors together just a little bit more and it's helping everything look more realistic all right now here to very finish this off i'm going to go ahead and grab my brush tool we're just going to grab this color here and just create these lights little glows we're just going to change this from normal down to color dodge there we go to make it look like it's kind of glowing fantastic right here at the edge and right here at the edge here as well grab this green color and kind of bring this up create some nice glow effects this color dodge adjustment layer really kind of like makes that glow a little bit more uh pronounced and makes it look like it's interacting with your subject a little bit more there we go nice i think i over did it on the hair a little bit that's no big deal you can just click on your layer mask and just paint black on that layer mask at any point in time and you are good to go all right now here at the very end i just recommend doing a little bit of you know kind of like give and take a little bit i'm just look now my layers and i'm turning these off and on just to see like hey did i overdo it on any of these layers you know sometimes it's easy to kind of overdo things especially when you just stack these effects on one after another after another so i like to turn these layers off and on to see like okay did i actually help here or what did i do this a little bit too much you know that's the goal here is trying to figure out every one of these layers like you know uh did it help or did it hurt let's go ahead and group these together shift click all these layers and then hit ctrl or command g to group these together and then here you can see there's just my overall effect i do like it but i think i just overdid it a little bit totally normal in photoshop so i'm going to just take that entire group and i'm going to lower down the opacity here we go i think it's just going to make it look more realistic in general let's go ahead and group this together double click there and call that our subject i think this came out really really cool let's just make this layer visible and invisible again i think i overdid it a little bit on the hair there so i can just put a layer mask for this entire group and layer mask out the hair really easy here at the end you don't even have to go in and find all the individual layers you can just go in and change exactly what you need perfect i think this is looking great so again i'm just going to duplicate to show you this is completely non-destructive what we've done here by the way let's go ahead i'm just going to duplicate our subject and just turn off our layer mask don't forget you guys can download the sample psd for free on phlearn.com just follow the link right down below i hope you enjoyed this tutorial thanks so much for watching if you did like it hit that subscribe button we'll send you free tutorials every week i'll flirt you later bye everyone

Channel: PHLEARN

Views: 21,928

Keywords: photoshop neon effect, neon effect photoshop, neon effect, glow effect photoshop, photoshop glow effect, neon glow effect, neon light effect photoshop, neon glow photoshop, neon glow effect photoshop, neon lights, glow effect, glowing effect photoshop, photoshop effect, neon glowing effect photoshop, neon glowing effect, neon glowing photo editing, photoshop neon light effect, neon photoshop, photoshop neon, glow lines effect, glowing lines

Id: X-e2wPuawy4

Length: 19min 11sec (1151 seconds)

Published: Tue May 25 2021