Home Photo Articles Photo Contest Photo Gallery Photo Tips Photoshop Tips Photo Quotes
Tip #27 LightSaber Photo Effect (Photoshop 7)
By: Tedric GarrisonFor those Star Wars fans who may be out there; who may or may not be quite as into
it as much as David Fox and I were (See his Gallery Here) this effect is 100% just for the fun of it. Do note however; because you are dealing with "light" this effect will always look better on a dark background.
First Step open the picture of your hero or heroine. (If you are planning on doing
a lot of this effect - such as a fan film; it will be easier if the picture already has a line
in the shot - like a dowel.)
Step 2 - using the line tool (9th down on the right hand side of toolbox) draw a line about two thirds as long as your character. The width will depend on the size of the handle of your saber. Step 3 - Go over to the Layer Menu (4th over from the far left
at the top of the frame. Make a duplicate layer. Step 4 Open the Layers dialog box
and make sure the first layer of your saber is active.
Step 5 - go back to the Layers Menu, go down to Layer Style, open it and then go down to "Outer Glow" and click once. This will open a dialog box similar to the one
below. When you open yours it will not have a color chosen yet. Look at the small square purple box in the example. It is not labeled, but this is where click to select the color for your saber.
The default setting on this page are correct except for the two in the middle of the box, labeled "Spread and Size". You can play with these settings and see the results as you do so. Regardless of what numbers you choose, the spread needs to be approximately double of what you put in for the size. This effect is on the first saber layer.
Step 6 - go back to the Layers dialog box (far right), open it and make sure that the
second layer is now the active layer. Now open the filter menu (6th from the far left
at the top of the frame.) Go down to blur, then down to "Gaussian Blur" and click it once.
This will open its own dialog box with a single slider bar you can adjust. You can also
see this result as you do it. I usually keep it fairly low like 4 or 5 pixels. You now have two different effects on the same blade; to make it one image you need to go to the layers menu and scroll down towards the bottom where it says "Flatten Image" and click once.
If you were to look closely where the light meets the handle it still looks a little awkward,
here you have one of two options. A) you can go in with the paint brush tool and round off the square tip so it looks more natural or . . .B) you can go back to the filter section
(now that you've flattened the image), go down to "Render", the over to "Lens Flair".
With Lens Flair dialog box open you can place the flair right at the point where the light is coming out of the saber handle. Don't over do it, this is just a little something to make the
light look natural. (I usually only do a brightness of 15-20 % - any more than that and the flair starts to catch you eye more than the saber.) You can also play with the different lens types depending on personal taste.
Note: in this example the blade went out of the edge of the frame. If you can actually
see the entire blade you may want to fix the tip (with the paint brush tool or the clone tool whichever you like better) by just rounding it off.Photoshop Tip #27: Tedric Garrison tedric@betterphototips.com
