Neon Sign Text Effect | Photoshop Tutorial with Free Textures

hey everyone brady from texture labs here and today i'm going to run through a tutorial in adobe photoshop to create this neon sign it's actually not too complex and the only painting it requires is drawing a few dots but i think you do end up with some nice details i'm going to show you how to build the back of the sign and get some good gritty metal in there we'll look at how you can really push photoshop to give us these bright saturated glows in the neon and finally we'll glue the whole thing together with just a little bit of hazy atmosphere that's all coming up let's get started all right getting started with a new document here and i'm going to set the width to 3840 and the height to 2160 pixels which is 4k resolution it's on the larger size but that'll give me room to get some nice detail in there and i'm going to set the background color to black and create so first thing i'll do is get some type going t for my type tool and i'll set the color up here to white and this is a font called miniola this will work with just about any font although you'll want something that's at least a medium weight if the letter forms get too narrow you won't be left with any room for the neon and i'm going to scale that up with a command t for transform and i can hold the option key to scale symmetrically and i'll just eyeball it to the center something like that looks about right return and i'm just going to put one more layer in here with another detail i'll just create a big fat underline that'll give me something to put another color neon in so m for the marquee tool and then i'll just drag out a rectangle something like that and i'll press d to set my colors to default white is my background color so i can use command delete to fill that with white and then these two separate layers i'm just going to combine them into a single layer and treat them as one big shape to create the neon sign i'll shift select the text layer then i can use command e to merge the layers and i'm going to rename that layer sine all right and next i'm going to get some metal texture going in here i'm opening this texture labs metal 146 some good scratches and rust going on in here i'll command a to select all command c to copy then command w to close that one and i'm going to paste it right on top here command v and i want this texture to live only inside of the letters i'll do that by creating a clipping mask so i'll hover my cursor in between the two layers and give it an option click creating a clipping mask which is just a name for this new group of layers then i'm going to transform the texture with command t and i just want to scale it down maybe move it a little and find a good place for it inside of the letters something about like that looks good then i'm going to want this part of the metal sign to be much darker i'm going to do that with a levels adjustment layer i'll go to my adjustment layers menu and select levels and i'm also going to want to include that in the clipping mask to be sure it only ever affects these layers so i'll option click to include the levels in the clipping mask then up here in the properties tab for the levels adjustment i'll drag the white output level here all the way down to 60. all right next i'm going to apply just one effect here to give the sign a bit of a defined edge i'll select the sign layer down here and go to my effects menu and stroke i'll reset to defaults then all i'm going to do is change the fill type down here to pattern and i'm going to select this kind of wobbly noise pattern and bring the scale of it as high as it'll go which is one thousand percent and let's bring the opacity back a little bit to 70 percent and okay so that just gave me some nice random edges it's a fairly subtle detail but it feels kind of like sharp metal and gives a little definition to the edge all right now on to the fun part creating the neon so i'll start by going to the very top of my layer sack here and i'm going to create a new layer and i will name this layer neon then i want to make a selection in the shape of the sine layer so i'll hover over that layer's thumbnail and give it a command click so now i've got these marching ants showing me i've got a selection in the shape of the sign layer and i'm going to create the path of the neon by using the selection but first i'm going to make a few modifications to it i'll go up into the menu here to select modify and contract then i'm going to set this contract to 12 pixels okay and next i'll go back into the same menu select modify and this time choose smooth and i'll smooth it by 8 pixels all right and i'll zoom in a bit here that's looking like the neon shape i want so next i'm going to draw a line along that path with edit stroke now i'm going to set the width to just two pixels for now this will just be a thin line it's not meant to be the full width of the neon tube so two pixels and i'm going to set the color here to white location should be set to center and blending mode normal at 100 opacity so okay then command d to deselect so that is my starting point but i'm really going to turn it into neon using a few effects so in my effects menu down here the first thing i'll select is stroke then i'll reset that to defaults and i'm going to set the position to outside then bring the size up to five pixels and i'll change the color here to a really really light blue something about like that so okay now this stroke effect is actually creating the full width of the neon tubing and the reason for using strokes to do that rather than just drawing that initial line wider to begin with you'll have to bear with me because that reason will become apparent in just another minute but first i want to get some glow going here so i'm going to select another effect i'm going to turn on outer glow i'll reset that to defaults and then i'm going to change the blend mode to linear dodge and i'll bring the opacity all the way up to 100 then i'm going to change the color to as saturated of a blue as i can get something like that okay then i'll set the spread to 20 and the size to 30 pixels all right i want to create yet another glow one that sort of spills way off the edges here but i have a problem photoshop will not allow you to use more than one instance of outer glow some of these effects have a little plus button next to them meaning you can double or triple up on the effect outer glow does not have that option but what i can do is actually use drop shadow to create a glow all i have to do is select drop shadow here and i'll reset to defaults then i'm going to change the blend mode from multiply to linear dodge and i'll change the color from black to this saturated blue again and for this larger glow i'm going to set the color to a slightly cooler blue i actually think it can make things a bit more natural looking when the colors of the glows aren't necessarily an exact match so something like that and then i'll crank the opacity all the way up to 100 and i'm going to set the distance to 0 the spread to 10 and here i'm going to bring the size all the way up to 200 pixels and there we go an extra glow so that'll do it for the effects i'll hit okay all right so starting to look like neon but neon's not really neon until it has those little gaps in it the places where it kind of plugs into the sign so i'm going to start to break up the path of the neon using a layer mask my neon layer still selected i'm going to click on the layer mask button to create a mask and i'll just mask out the areas where i want the breaks to be by painting them out i'll press b for my brush tool then d to set my colors to default and x to reverse those making black the foreground color then i'll right click and set the brush to 30 pixels and bring the hardness up to 100 then i'll zoom in a bit and i'm just going to make my way around the neon here and just give it a single click to paint into the mask and create some gaps in the neon and you can see there's something really cool happening as i paint these spots out in the mask i'm not ending up with any hard corners i'm automatically getting this nice natural rounded end on the neon so how is that working well it's because the stroke effect i applied is actually what's giving most of the body to the neon if i turn off these effects this is the actual layer before the effects are applied so the mask is only erasing these little bits of the line and then the stroke comes in and creates all these nice rounded edges so i'm just going to kind of cruise around the neon here and just eyeball where maybe those gaps are there's probably some method to it if you make real neon signs there's a gap every two feet or who knows what i don't really need to know i'm working in photoshop so uh maybe two gaps per letter and i'll make sure i put a couple of gaps in the underlying part yeah something about like that and i'll turn these glow effects back on and that is looking cool all right well let me option click on this mask we can take a look directly at the mask i just made and i can actually use this mask for one more purpose i'm going to select all and command c to make a copy of the mask then i'll exit the mask and command d to deselect now if i command v and paste that i have the contents of the mask now on a new layer and if i drag that layer down below the neon it actually gives me the look of some holes where maybe the neon plugs in or is connected to the side so i'm going to take this layer and include it in the clipping mask with an option click and i'll set it to multiply mode so now it's kind of part of the metal sign i'm just going to make that a bit more subtle by blurring it a few pixels i'm going to blur it with a filter blur gaussian blur and just go three pixels and that makes it a bit more of a subtle part of the background okay so one more step on this neon layer i'm going to select the neon layer and i'll scale it up a little bit with command t or transform i want to create just a little bit of a sense of dimension like the neon is raised off of the sign so i'm holding option to scale symmetrically and maybe just going to about right here so return and it's subtle but i think it does give you just a little bit of depth all right well next let's take a look at changing the color on one of these neon shapes and if you're finding this tutorial useful so far please do hit that like button that is much appreciated and be sure to subscribe in the next tutorial i'm going to share my secret formula for grungy stamped ink which is fully adjustable and even has live type all right back to the neon for some color variation the first thing i want to do is create a duplicate of my neon layer so i'll use my go to method to do that which is to hold option and then click and drag a copy i'll rename this one to neon pink and for the moment i'm just going to turn off that original neon layer then to change the color of this neon all i have to do is double click on the stroke effect select the color and i'm just going to adjust the hue of this color i'll bring it up to kind of a light pink all right then i'm going to do the same thing with the outer glow effect i'll select the color and shift the hue which makes it more of a neon pink okay and then same thing with the drop shadow effect color shift the hue and okay so now we've got neon pink across everything and the nice thing is that i already have a layer mask for these neon layers and i can use the mask to choose which parts of the neon i want to show on which layers so i'll select the mask on this layer then m for the marquee tool and i'll drag a selection around the text part then black is still my foreground color so i can use option delete to fill that part of the mask with black and hide that part of the neon i'll deselect that and turn off the neon pink for now and then basically do the opposite thing on the original neon layer i'll select the mask here and drag a selection around the underline and fill that with black using option delete deselect and let's turn them both on and it almost feels like turning on a neon sign clicking these layers on there's something really gratifying about it and i think it's a testament to how cool neon is all right one final piece and i think a little bit of fog in here will help bring the glow out and make it a bit more epic i'm going to open this atmosphere 141. kind of a swirling fog i will copy that and close it and then paste it all the way on top then transform and i just want to scale it down a little bit and kind of get it to be the width of my document about like that then i'm going to set the blend mode here to linear dodge and i'm going to make that sort of a dark blue fog by creating a hue saturation adjustment layer down here in my adjustment layers menu hue saturation then i'll create a clipping mask so the adjustment layer only applies to the fog with an option click between the layers then in this hue saturation properties i'm going to click on the colorize box and i'll set the hue to something in the purpley blues about 250 i'll bring the saturation up to 50 and then take the lightness down and make it fairly subtle i'll set the lightness to negative 75 and with everything in place as i often do i'm going to kind of wrap it up with an adjustment layer over the top of the whole image i'll create a levels adjustment layer and just give it a bit more contrast with the black level up at 11 and the white level down to about 240. and that wraps it up the finished neon look i really hope you enjoy experimenting with this technique please let me know in the comments below and hit that like button don't forget to subscribe you can always check out texturelabs.org for a huge library of textures thanks for watching and i will see you next time

Channel: Texturelabs

Views: 43,751

Keywords: photoshop, photoshop tutorial, adobe photoshop, neon, photoshop tutorials, photoshop text effects, text effect photoshop, neon text photoshop, neon effect photoshop, neon photoshop, photoshop neon effect, neon light, photoshop neon text, neon effect, neon sign, neon photoshop tutorial, textureguys, photoshop tutorial 2020, photoshop neon sign, photoshop glowing text, photoshop neon light effect, neon logo, neon font, kathmandu, text syles, typography

Id: 2LPfnb6PZl8

Length: 13min 47sec (827 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 10 2020