Super Easy Neon Glow Effect! Affinity Photo Tutorial

in this video i'll show you how to add a fun neon glow effect to any photo let's get started if you'd like to follow along with me i've left a download link for today's images in the video description the first thing we're going to do is make a selection of the model to do this we'll use the selection brush tool using this tool we can easily paint across the model to make a selection and if you ever select too much just hold down alt or option and then you can paint to remove from your selection to be extra precise with your selection remember that you can zoom in and use a smaller brush you can use the bracket keys on your keyboard to make the brush bigger or smaller after our selection is looking good we'll refine it from the context toolbar using this tool we'll paint across the edge of his hair this tells affinity to take a second look at those areas and make the selection of the hair even better now that our selection has been refined we're ready to apply a mask after that we just need to deselect which we can do by pressing command or control d next i want to make our document a little bigger so that we have more space to work with to do this press c for the crop tool and then crop outwards once you have a good size for your document press enter to confirm your crop next we'll add a black background to do this come to layer new fill layer make the fill layer black and then drag it to the bottom of the layer stack after adding a black background we can see that affinity did a good job with our selection of the model but it's not perfect it might be hard for you to see on your screen but affinity failed to mask out a thin line on some of the photo's edges fortunately this is easy to clean up just press b for the paintbrush and make sure you're painting in black then select the mask layer and begin painting to mask out those thin lines and while we're at it we can also paint on the model to clean up any other areas of the mask that need it remember that you can paint in white to reveal parts of the photo and you can switch your paint color by pressing x after you're done painting you can press command or control 0 to zoom all the way out now our model has been perfectly masked from his original background and we've added a new black background the next step is to add a triangle for this video we'll place the model inside of the triangle but feel free to use a different shape if you want to make a triangle click and hold on the rectangle tool and then select the polygon tool then set the number of sides to 3 then we just need to click and drag while holding down shift to make a perfect triangle you might be wondering why did we use the polygon tool instead of the triangle tool well there's a simple explanation for this the triangle tool makes isosceles triangles while the polygon tool makes equilateral triangles everyone is welcome to their own opinion but i personally think equilateral triangles are much better looking than isosceles triangles so that's why i went with the polygon tool but if you're a big isosceles fan go ahead and use the triangle tool the next thing we're going to do is remove the triangle's fill and then give it a thick white stroke and as a small tip even though this slider only goes up to 100 you can always type in a bigger number next we'll rotate the triangle to flip it upside down to keep your rotation in 15 degree increments hold down shift while rotating next let's get out the move tool so that we can easily resize and position the triangle and model when we try to move the model though you'll notice that we aren't able to do so since he was the original photo in this document affinity locked his layer to unlock the layer all we need to do is press on this lock icon then we can move him around without a problem after you have the triangle and model positioned in the way you want we're going to mask out the parts of the model that are going outside of the bottom of the triangle to do this get back out the brush tool make sure you're painting in black and then select the mask layer also set your brush to a good size and make the hardness one hundred percent normally i like to paint on masks with zero percent hardness because you typically want a nice soft edge on masks but in this case we're using the triangle to have a very defined edge on the mask so 100 hardness will work better after painting out the bottom parts of the model we're going to use a different technique for his head first select the model's layer then duplicate it by pressing command or ctrl j then drag the duplicate layer to the top of the layer stack and just like that our model is perfectly covering the top part of the triangle now the problem is the bottom part of the mask which is looking a little wonky that's easy to fix though just select the mask and paint away everything except his head next we're going to add a neon glow to the triangle and make it look like that light is reflecting off of the model as well first close up these two groups to keep our layers panel organized and then select the triangles layer then duplicate the triangle by pressing command or ctrl j now get out the move tool so that we can change the triangle's stroke color from the context toolbar we're going to make the stroke a gradient to do this select one of the color stops and give it a bright color i'll make mine red and if you want to be extra precise you can change the color picker from an hsl color wheel to rgb sliders then we can double check that our color is 100 red and that there is zero percent green or blue then select the other color stop and give it a different bright color i'll make mine 100 blue you'll notice that the gradient on our triangle is the opposite of the gradient we made in the context toolbar that's because we flipped our triangle upside down so the gradient is also upside down fortunately you can easily flip your gradient by clicking on the reverse button personally i don't like that the gradient has a large area of purple as it transitions from red to blue so to make the gradient more red and blue and not so purple i'm going to add two more color stops to add a color stop just double click on the gradient line then give it 100 blue then add another color stop and make it 100 red i want both of these color stops to be an equal distance from the center luckily for us affinity makes this very easy by giving us a position percentage the percentage goes from 0 on the left to 50 in the middle to one hundred percent on the far right i'll make the blues position forty percent and the reds position sixty percent that way they're both ten percent away from the center now that our gradient is looking good we'll place this colored triangle underneath the white one then we'll increase its stroke so that we can see it from behind the white triangle now we're going to blur this colored triangle to make it look like it's glowing to do this open up the layer effects and add a gaussian blur i think this is looking really good but remember that you can always change the triangle's stroke width or the amount of blur on it if you don't like how it looks for the final part of this effect we're going to add a red and blue glow on the model so that it looks like the light is reflecting onto him to do this we'll start by making a selection of the model this is actually really easy to do since we've already cut him out from his background all we need to do is hold down command or control and then click on the original photo of him then we'll make a new pixel layer and bring it to the top of the layer stack then with the paintbrush we can paint red and blue all over him just set your hardness to zero percent and make your brush nice and big then pick out your color and begin painting after you're done painting deselect by pressing command or control d then all we need to do is change the blend mode to soft light our project is just about done but i have a few more tips for you that can help to make this effect look even better first apply a brightness and contrast adjustment layer this photo would definitely look better with some more brightness and contrast next let's lower the opacity of our painted pixel layer around 85 percent makes the photo look a little more convincing you could also continue painting red or blue on this pixel layer if you want to change how different areas of the model are colored or you could get out the eraser tool set it to a low opacity and paint away some of the color from certain areas finally i want to make the background a little more exciting to do this we'll come over to the other photo that i included in the video description and i'll copy and paste it into the main photo that we've been working on you can do this by pressing command or control c and command or control v just as you would in any other program then we'll get out the move tool and resize this layer then bring it to the bottom of the layer stack and place it right above the black background then we'll change the blend mode to hard light after that lower the opacity to whatever you think looks good and there we have it we've now completed our neon glow effect nice work my friends if you want to learn our affinity workflow then check out the free course below you

Channel: Affinity Revolution

Views: 34,421

Keywords: affinity photo, tutorial, neon, glow, gradient, triangle, model, fun, easy, affinity revolution, affinity

Id: _Ugd1hfIR8M

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 30 2021