Photoshop - Forth Self-taught tutorial

Adding Glow:

All of the ideas I have towards a front DVD inlay include the idea of female actors. For this reason I looked into ways which I could perfect these images but also enhance the front cover as a whole. I came across a tutorial which claimed to add a glow to the light parts of an image. In my case this could be an actor’s face. When undertaking this tutorial I didn’t use have an exact image which I wanted to add this effect to so I simply chose an image from those which I had earlier sourced to try this out. If I liked it I could then apply it to any of my images throughout the whole project. I personally feel this was one of the most complex tutorials I had followed and required a lot more time and concentration than any of the others but in my opinion the result did reflex this.

What did I do?

The first thing I did was select a suitable picture. I wanted an image which had faces in so I could see the full extent of this technique. The image I chose can be seen below and located here: http://blogs.whatsontv.co.uk/movietalk/2009/09/16/couch-potato-pickings-chick-flicks-for-a-girls-night-in/ - Accessed 06/02/2014. I simply opened this image in Photoshop.

The next stage of this tutorial was to select the highlights of the photo (the bright areas). To do this I simply went to the Select menu and then clicked on Colour Range. A dialog box appears after this section, I simply had to change the drop down menu to select Highlights and then Ok this selection. The main image then had all of the highlights selected. With this in mind I now needed to add a new layer which was of these highlights. To do this I went to Layer, New and then Layer Via Copy, all with my highlights selected. These highlights are then saved as Layer 1.

Now I needed to change the blend mode to change the effect these highlights have on the overall image. To do this I simply selected Layer 1 and then changed the blend mode from Normal to Screen. This did make the highlights of the photo stand out however too much and it now looked tacky and unprofessional. This leads me onto my next step.

To remove this harsh brightness and create a smooth glow effect I need to next add a blur. To achieve this I went into the Filter menu and then Blur followed by Gaussian Blur. The Gaussian Blur dialog box will appear and the level of blur can be changed. The tutorial suggested that I change my blur to around 8 pixels however on my image this was far too much and I reduced this to between 3 and 4 pixels. I then simply clicked Ok to apply these changes. Next I simply duplicated the layer by going to Layer, New, Layer Via Copy. This enhanced the brightness but too much in some areas.

The next step to this tutorial was to create a layer mask to control the intensity and positioning of this new glow effect. Before I could do this I needed to group my layers. This was because I had too layers which both worked on the glow. To group my layers I simply used the Shift key to select them both at once and then went to the Layer menu and then Group Layers. Next I needed to add my layer mask to the whole group. To achieve this I simply clicked on the group and then used the layer mask icon at the bottom of the screen. With the brush tool selected and the paint colour set to black I then painted over my image to minimise the amount of glow used. Anywhere where I didn’t want the glow at all I painted black and areas where I wanted to tone down the glow I changed the paint colour to grey.

The image below shows my final image with the glow effect added.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My results and evaluation:

The final effect that this tutorial added was subtle but very effective. I will definitely use this technique in my DVD inlay as I will be using people’s faces and this seems to be where the effect works best. It was and is very time consuming but will show a great deal of skill in one tiny area of the inlay as a whole. I feel the results I achieved using this tutorial were the closest to that which was aimed for and hence I am really pleased with myself when it comes to this effect.