BadMoon
Demi G0D Overseer
Well I am now trying to learn how to photoshop lightsabers. Here is my first attempt. Any suggestions on making it look better are more than welcome. It just didn't end up quite right.
Photoshop Help Lightsabers
- Thread starter BadMoon
- Start date
Help Support Collector Freaks Forum:
Here's my post from a thread I started and the link if you want to check out what others responded, hope it helps.
Lightsaber Effects Tutorial for Photoshop
Well, it's been asked of me a number of times, and at this point, I actually have a system that is working out well for me, so here's how I go about my lightsaber glows.
Layer 1 (top most layer)
I usually just make a pure outline of the blade from the figure, but sometimes camera angles can distort the shape, where the film effects never followed those rules, and I'll just make the blade shape that seems best. I make my selection with the Magnetic Lasso Tool, then I use a feather of about 1 pixel. How much you feather really depends upon the resolution of your image. For images that I only plan to post here, I'm at 72 dpi and about 800 x 600 pixels, so my feather is 1. For my 10 megapixel camera images, which are about 4000 x 2500 pixels, I usually use a feather of about 3. With UNDO, it's easy to experiment. The only reason to feather here is to make the edge slightly imperfect, that's all you're going for.
Layer 2
Looking at some pictures of lightsabers, I noticed there's a soft glow around the white blade of the saber that's basically a white tone of the saber color. I use the selection of the white blade layer, and then expand it by about twice the ammount of pixels as my feathering on Layer 1; if my feather was 1, I expand by 3 pixels, and if my feather was 3, I expand by 2 pixels. After expanding, I feather the selection by half of the expanded number, so if I went larger by 3, I feather 2 pixels, and if I expand by 6, I feather 3 pixels. Here you want to be a little more blurred to give the illusion of light coming from a source and fading off at the outer edge, but not too much because it's still tight to the source. Once the selection is ready, I fill the layer with a whitish shade of the saber's color. I finish by making the layer a Screen layer.
Layer 3
This layer is the defining layer of the lightsaber's color. For this layer, I again go back to the original white blade layer selection, then I expand it by about 10 times the feathering on layer 1; if I feathered 1 pixel, I expand by about 10, and if I feathered 3, I expand about 30 pixels. Once I've expanded, I always feather by just about the same ammount as I expanded. For an expansion of 10 pixels, I feather 8 usually, and for an expansion of 30 pixels, I'll feather 25. Once the selection is ready, I fill the layer with the saber's color. I finish by making this layer a Screen layer as well.
Layer 4 (bottom layer)
This final layer is mainly to add to the illusion of a glowing blade. I do the same as layer 3, only my expansion numbers are double what I did for layer three, so if I expand by 10 pixels on that layer, I expand by 20 on this layer. I still feather by about 90% of the number I expanded by, so expanded by 20 pixels I'll feather by 15. Once the selection is ready, I fill the layer with the saber's color. Finally, I convert this layer to screen also, and then drop the opacity down to anywhere between 40-60%, going by how the image looks to know what ammount works best. You really just want this layer to add a little atmospheric glow around the blade, and let the top 3 layers define the blade.
Lightsaber Effects Tutorial for Photoshop
BadMoon
Demi G0D Overseer
Cool! Thanks man. What makes this so hard is I never use photoshop before. So finding everything is a pain in the rear.
BadMoon
Demi G0D Overseer
Second attempt. Went with a red blade just to see what it would look like. :maul
BadMoon
Demi G0D Overseer
Ok last attempt before I have to put this away. I am later going to try Maulfan's methods. It will probably take a while to learn. Anyways, notice Plo in the background?
BadMoon
Demi G0D Overseer
Here is a new try.
BadMoon
Demi G0D Overseer
Last attempt for the night.
Stendec
Last Survivor
Nice work. My advice is to soften up the glow, particularly the white core because it looks too solid at the moment. Follow the steps MaulFan illustrated above, using a different layer for for each part of the glow. Using lots of seperate layers makes life much easier in photoshop and it gives more depth and realisim to any effect.
Shropt
Super Freak
Yeah, the most important part is the feathering. That is the difference between a smooth round saber and a square saber.
BadMoon
Demi G0D Overseer
I will look tonight and see if I can find the feather tool. Thanks for your help guys. 
Shropt
Super Freak
I will look tonight and see if I can find the feather tool. Thanks for your help guys.
Feathering is not a tool, its an option. You trace your saber then choose to feather the selection. The feathering is THE most difficult part to get right. Lots of trial and error.
Indeed, I did it countless times before I found a method that worked consistently for me. There's a bit of math to the instructions I gave and I find that it works pretty well over any range of image sizes from a small 800x600 image to a 2000x3000 image.
Stendec
Last Survivor
Personaly I wouldnt bother with the feather option. I'd just use gaussian blur because it gives the exact same result but you can adjust the value and see the results in the realtime preview so its easier to judge.
Well, you can go to Image>Image Size and resize from there, but that resizes the whole canvas and everything on it. There's also Transform which will allow you to resize you're current selection/layer, to keep it in scale while rescaling it with transform hold SHIFT while drag and resize, to scale equally to the center hold ALT+SHIFT.
I also recommend using the Polygonal Lasso tool to select objects in pictures, (it's under the Magnetic Lasso tool, hold down the mouse button on that tool to get to it) You just outline with the lasso tool then color the selection whatever color. It would work well for the lightning.
I also recommend using the Polygonal Lasso tool to select objects in pictures, (it's under the Magnetic Lasso tool, hold down the mouse button on that tool to get to it) You just outline with the lasso tool then color the selection whatever color. It would work well for the lightning.
BadMoon
Demi G0D Overseer
I looked last night and couldn't find "feathering".
Rook
Super Freak
It's under the "Select" menu. Should be right above "Modify."
BadMoon
Demi G0D Overseer
Cool thanks! This is a pain in the rear to learn. Very interesting though. Thanks for your help again Monk!
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