PHOTOSHOPP SKILLS
AmpA up your photos with easy SFX
LOOKING TO ADD A LITTLE WOW factor to your images or create abstract cover art for a project? Adding a glow effect is a great way to achieve an eye-catching look. It can transform standardlooking imagery into unique art that can serve many purposes. We’re focusing on using the selection tools once again and refining edges to get a perfect perimeter. Refining an edge is a great way to select exactly what you want; sometimes AI can’t quite hack it.
Other areas we’re focusing on are blur and hue/saturation effects, and adding them together to create a nice even glow and an aesthetically pleasing end product. These effects enable you to create depth in an image, putting more emphasis on the area you want to glow. The part of the image you choose to glow is important—it needs to be at the top of the hierarchy, because it’s what people will look at first. Hopefully, by adding these tutorials to your artistic arsenal and putting your imagination to the test, you can create something visually grabbing. –SAM LEWIS
1
PREPARE YOUR IMAGE
Like every tutorial so far, you need an image; try to find one with a subject in the foreground. We’re using a nature shot to showcase how to add a little sparkle to an image. Begin the same way as before: Load your image into Photoshop and make an original copy (Ctrl-J) to duplicate a layer. Rename the bottom layer “original [insert name],” then lock it, and hide it away. We’ve chosen a very interesting-looking frog for this example, and the end goal is to make its eyes glow.
>> Using the selection tool, or any other selection method of your choice, highlight around the subject of your image. For ours, we have highlighted the frog and the plant, because they are both in focus.
>> Once selected, click “Select and mask…” at the top of the screen. This opens a new view with refining tools. In this section, we’re refining the edge of our selection. Different view options are available on the right to help differentiate the foreground from the background.
>> We’ve selected the onion skin view [ Image A]; you can slide the transparency up or down to make your selection more or less prominent. Once you’re satisfied that you can see your selection clearly, head over to the left of the screen, and click the Refine brush tool. This should be the second icon down in the left-hand tool panel. Draw around rough areas of your selection—you can use the sliders in the panel on the right to adjust the sharpness of the brush. Once you have finished refining your edge, you must change the output to “New layer with layer mask” (you can find this at the bottom-right of the right-hand panel). Hit “OK.”
2
GROUP WORK
Next, we are going to select the glow part of our selection. Hold Ctrl and click the mask layer you just created. This should select your mask selection. Then, using the selection tool, highlight the areas you want to glow, either adding or subtracting areas using the Alt key. With your selection, click the image thumbnail in the layer instead of the masked section, and duplicate the layer: Ctrl-J. We then put the new layer into a group—with the layer selected, hit Ctrl-G, then hide the group [ Image B].
3
CONTRASTING VIEWS
Moving on, we need to make the foreground stand out further. To do this, click your first layer (the unedited picture, not the backup locked layer), click the circle icon at the bottom-right called the adjustment layer, used in the last tutorial, then hit “Color look up.”
>> This opens a new Properties tab; click in the 3D LUT file section and find the moonlight effect. This darkens the background, creating more emphasis on the subject.
>> After increasing the contrast between foreground and background, unhide the group created earlier, rightclick the “glow” layer, and change it to a Smart Object. Duplicate this, and on the duplicated layer, change the layer type from “Normal” to “Linear dodge (add).” To smooth the edges, go to “Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur,” and change the radius to around five pixels. Then duplicate once more.
4
BLURRED VISION Once that is done, we need to increase the glow. Click the latest duplicated layers—they should all be in the group created earlier. Click into the Gaussian blur filter in the layer and change the radius to 100. This adds a wider glow. Duplicate this again: Ctrl-J. Learning these keyboards shortcuts is incredibly useful for increasing efficiency when creating projects. Follow the same step again, click into the Gaussian blur filter in the layer, and change the radius this time to 250, further increasing the glow. Repeat once more, now changing the Gaussian blur radius to 500.
>> Then click “Group layer > Adjustment layer > Hue/ saturation.” This opens a hue/saturation layer in the group [ Image C]. Within this, click the left thumbnail in the layer, and a Properties tab now appears. At the bottom of the Properties tab is an “Adjustment clip icon”—it looks like a square with an arrow coming out of the right and pointing down. Hit this to apply. In the tab, click “Colorize,” increase the saturation, and then select what color you want your glow to be using the slider. We decided to go with a strong yellow and increased the brightness to over-exaggerate the effect.
5
GLOW WITH THE FLOW
To create more of a contrast from the glow and the rest of the foreground, we need to use another hue/saturation adjustment layer. Click the layer of the original image and the mask. Then add the adjustment layer, just as we did earlier, and be sure to clip it, too. Drop the saturation a little and do the same with the brightness—this should make the other areas of the foreground darker compared to the glow.
>> To finalize, we dropped the opacity of the group layer to 90%, as we felt the glow was too strong and wanted a little of the original image to come through [ Image D]. You can always go back and alter things slightly. Use these tutorials as guides; each image will be different and art is subjective, so choose what you feel works best. Try using this technique to create interesting imagery for cover photos, or to enhance certain parts of pictures, maybe even album covers—who knows?