Advanced Glow Effects

Sep 15th in Effects by Collis
In this tutorial, we're going to create some really sharp-looking glow effects using a combination of layer styles, the Pen Tool and Color Blending. The end effect is quite stunning and hopefully you'll pick up some tips you didn't know before.

Author: Collis

Hello! I started PSDTUTS because years ago reading Photoshop tutorials was how I got into design. I hope the site helps and inspires others! You can find me on Twitter!

Step 1:

As with pretty much every tutorial I've ever written, we begin with a radial gradient. This one is pretty harsh and goes from a reddish brown color to black. Here are the exact color codes:

Foreground color - #922f00
Background color - #000000

Step 2:

In this tutorial, we actually need a pretty intense center, so what we'll do is duplicate the layer we just made and set the one above to a blending mode of Color Dodge. There are a few types of blending modes, darkening ones, lightening ones, colorizing ones and inverting ones. Color Dodge is probably the strongest of the lightening ones. As you can see in the screenshot, it produces a pretty full-on center.

Step 3:

Now in our glow effect, it helps to have a nice textured background. So we are going to create a sort of smoky haze. To do this, create a new layer, then make sure you have white, #ffffff, and black, #000000, selected as your background and foreground colors.

Then go to Filter > Render > Clouds. This will give you the same random cloud pattern as above.

Step 4:

Now set the opacity of your layer to Overlay and 30% transparency. In some instances this would be enough, but for our needs we want it even smokier looking!

So go to Filter > Sketch > Chrome and use default settings of 4 and 7 for detail and smoothness respectively. Actually you can probably mess around with those if you want, but the defaults seem to be fine.

When you're done, the result should look a lot smokier (once its overlayed at 30% transparency that is). You can see the result in the background of the next screenshot.

Step 5:

Now before we can start making glows, we need to have something to glow. Here's where we break out the pen tool. If you have used the pen tool much I suggest playing around with it a little. There are some tricky things you can do with shortcuts, but for this tutorial you don't need those.

In fact all we want to achieve are some nice curves. Fortunately this isn't too hard. I find the trick is not to use too many points. Instead rely on the Pen Tool's natural curving and drag the mouse out for each point so you get a big angle. In this S-curve shown above, I've only used three points, the starting point, the end point and one in between to give it the bend.

Step 6:

Once you have a nice curve, create a new layer. Then click on the Paintbrush Tool (B) and choose a very thin, hard brush. As you know, soft brushes are the blurry ones and hard brushes are more solid. In this case I suggest using a thickness of 3.

Note that you can have any color selected as your brush color because we'll go over it with a layer style shortly.

Step 7:

Now switch back to the Pen Tool. You must switch tools in order to do this next bit.

Then right-click and select Stroke Path. A little dialog box will appear as in the screenshot. Choose Brush and make sure there is a tick next to Simulate Pressure. This is important as it will give your curve tapered ends which will make it rock!

Next right click again and select Delete Path.

Step 8:

You should now have something like the above. Just a thin, cool swishy thing.

Step 9:

Now we add some glows. The easiest way to make our glows is to use layer styles. And the best way to tell you what layer styles to use is to tell you to download the sample Photoshop PSD from the bottom of this page and then open it up and look through them there.

In a nutshell, I've added two sets of glows. To do this I first use Outer Glow and then because I want a second glow, I change the Drop Shadow settings so that it becomes a glow (you can do this by reducing the Distance and changing the blend mode to something like Color Dodge)

Oh and also I've used a Color Overlay to make the item white so that its like the center of an intense glow.

Step 10:

So now you have the same line but with a cool glow coming off it. The beauty of using a layer style is that you can copy and paste it to other layers. To do this you just right-click the layer and select Copy Layer Style then create a new layer and right-click and choose Paste Layer Style.

Step 11:

So now repeat the same process a couple of times to make more squiggly lines.

In this instance, I made one a little thicker by changing the paint brush size before I did the Stroke Path bit of the process. I also made a third line and erased part of it and sorta made it join the other two to look like a cool triangular shape.

 

Step 12:

Here I've added some text in and applied the same layer style to the text layers.

It's important to pay lots of care and attention to your text. When you're first starting out, use simple fonts and play with spacing between letters, words and sizes. You can achieve a lot with just some small tricks. Here I've contrasted the three words by making Glow a lot larger and in regular casing, then made Advanced and FX much smaller, with greater space between the letters and all caps.

You can control spacing with text using the Character window. If it isn't already open go to Window > Character and it should appear. Mess about with the different settings until you learn what each controls.

Step 13:

Now we add some particles. To do this, create a new layer then select a tiny paint brush - size 3 - and just paint some dots on. It helps if they are clustered towards the center of the glow so that it looks like they are emanating from there.

You can make some of the central ones larger by doubling over on them with a second paint brush dab.

Then paste our Glow layer style on to that layer too!

Step 14:

Now that's looking pretty cool, but it will look even cooler if we give it some subtle coloring instead of this super gaudy red.

So create a new layer, and using a radial gradient, draw a blue to white gradient as shown.

Step 15:

Then set that layer to a blending mode of Color and change the opacity to 50%.

You'll see that it turns the image kind of bluish. I think that's looking much cooler already, but just to go that extra step I also created a couple of extra layers, one with some faint yellow and one with faint purple. You can see them in the screenshot above.

I set each layer to blending mode of Color and thin opacities so that they all fade together.

Step 16:

And there you have it: advanced glow effects with a cool color blend and subtle smoky background combined make for a pretty great effect.

Just remember to experiment with settings and try applying the glow to different things to see how it turns out. And try different color combinations, some surprising combinations turn out really beautiful. Good luck!

Sample PSD

Download the PSD for this tutorial

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User Comments

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  1. dSung September 15th

    Love it!
    Thanks so much for sharing, mate.


  2. noonnoo September 15th

    Very cool! Real pro tutorials!

    Thanks!


  3. Kyle September 15th

    Wonderful tutorial. Good to see the site back up and running! Cheers!


  4. Joefrey Mahusay September 15th

    I’ve never seen before like as great as this tutorial, only seen it in psdtuts.com, they makes great tutorial like this. I’ve always visit this site since they started.

    Thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge! Two thumbs up!


  5. Bstone September 15th

    Wow. I’ve been looking for this.
    Thank you very much.


  6. Zaigham September 16th

    Excellent tutorial!
    Simple and straight forward :)


  7. Ted September 16th

    Looks Sweet!


  8. Denzen September 16th

    Wow, the result is very nice and it’s very well explained ! Thanks, mate !


  9. Collis September 16th

    Yay, glad you guys liked it! Glows are so cool :-)


  10. Carlos September 16th

    Great Site!!! Although I was wondering how do u get that faded effect at the end of each “glowing streak”? I cant seem to get it to taper even with with the simulate pressure icon clicked. But amazing tuts.


  11. SigChat September 16th

    That’s a really nice effect, overused in the web design industry, but really nice still.


  12. Feanne September 16th

    So awesome. Thank you!


  13. Jonathan Solichin September 16th

    Amazing! What an original. Thanks!


  14. scott September 16th

    Love this!


  15. Dennis Plucinik September 16th

    You guys are killing with these tutorials. Congrats.


  16. Kev September 16th

    Great Site!!! Although I was wondering how do u get that faded effect at the end of each “glowing streak”?

    Click the option to apply pressure.


  17. Chris Coyier September 16th

    Super nice. Ahh the beauty of “simulate pressure”


  18. mmmark September 16th

    FYI, you mistakenly replaced the psd file in the chrome tutorial with the psd for this glow one…


  19. panther September 16th

    Very impressive! Great work, thanks for sharing.


  20. Johnie September 16th

    Wow!!!


  21. Conexion September 16th

    The overall effect, very nice. Very simple and effective. Though I wouldn’t say it is “Hard” to figure out how to do this effect, it is a very well presented tutorial and should help many people who are in the earlier stages of the learning process. The only part I strongly dislike is that background :P I can’t stand the tacky chrome filter. Nice work though :)


  22. Dana September 16th

    I can’t get the “Simulate Pressure” bit to work either. :(

    Great tutorial though.


  23. Dan Peterson September 16th

    Very nice, thanks a lot for all the tutorials. Just found the site and it’s already inspired me with quite a few different ways to implement some of these techniques!

    Great job and thanks again!


  24. Edwin September 16th

    Very cool tutorial! I’m definitely going to bookmark this website and come back for more.


  25. Jymster September 16th

    Excellent tutorial !! Thanks for sharing!


  26. Davis September 16th

    This tutorial is absolutely amazing! It was so easy and clear and my final results were just like the example! Thank you so much!


  27. fuqaha September 16th

    Sweeett !! Learned a couple of new tricks in this tutorial alone!


  28. Free Nature Photography Wallpaper September 16th

    that is amazing!! I need to try that out stat!!


  29. Jennifer Apple September 16th

    Nice work!


  30. replacement parts September 16th

    cool tutorial thanks…


  31. xpantz September 16th

    Excellent tutorial… thanks.

    for those who can’t get the tapered strokes…. you need to go to your brushes “window>brushes” and turn on “shape dynamics”


  32. Gnelfelf September 16th

    In order to get the tapered ends with the Simulate Pressure you have to make sure that shape dynamics is turned on and then you set control to “Pen Pressure”.

    At least that helped with me in CS3


  33. SoleAngelus September 16th

    Yeah thanks GNELFELF, that helped me too, i set the minimum brush width to 1% to, so it would work properly :)

    Excellent tut, and nice results :)


  34. sachin kaushik September 17th

    best effect your are good.


  35. General Zod September 17th

    Excellent tutorial, I have been looking to do something like this for years and have never come across anything as good as this, thanks loads.


  36. eso September 17th

    hmm…….. i cant get stroke path to work at all…… having trouble with pen tool…….hmm


  37. Juan G. Calderon Perez September 17th

    Thanks for the excellent tutorials i was looking for something like this!


  38. Mark C September 17th

    I like the web design integration add ins


  39. July September 17th

    simple and useful - very nice looking glow dudes


  40. Alex September 17th

    why are everyone of your tutorials so amazing? everyone is so great and useful


  41. Blackhawk1793 September 17th

    That is a very nice tut, i love it soo much!!!!!


  42. Mark September 17th

    Nice! I can definatly use this tutorial..
    Thnx!


  43. BHdrummer September 17th

    I can’t get the “stroke path” clickable…..help?


  44. Chris September 17th

    what if the “stroke path” isn’t clickable…I can’t figure out how to fix that


  45. nkhat September 17th

    wow realy fantactic tutorial
    thank you dear


  46. Talmo September 17th

    To get the stroke path to be clickable you have to select Paths as the type of path you’re creating. To do this simply click the middle icon in the first set of pen options from the pen toolbar. The pen toolbar can be found at the top of your screen, just below the menubar. Make sure to have selected the Pen tool first or you will not see the correct toolbar. Hope this helps!


  47. Ramon Bispo September 17th

    Beautiful!!!


  48. Sam September 17th

    Really nice


  49. Rashid September 17th

    Best tutorial yet! Good job. Keep up the good work.


  50. GOL September 17th

    Nice to start with the design… UP UP


  51. Cyberfunk September 17th

    Any chance of anyone explaining to me how to do this with the GIMP ? I can’t get past the chrome part of the tutorial… no idea how to do that w/ the GIMP ?


  52. Ray September 17th

    Hey, awesome tutorial! I was just wondering what font did you use for the words?


  53. Collis September 17th

    Hey Ray, I’m not sure but if you download the PSD you should be able to get it out of there :-)

    @Everyone: Thanks for the support, sorry for the couple of people who had trouble following some of the instructions, I’m on CS2 still (I know I know) so some of my tools are a bit different maybe? In any case thanks for helping each other out!


  54. Waqas September 17th

    Wow, you ROCK man….

    That was cool, i liked it :>

    Thanks for sharing :)


  55. nimbus September 17th

    You should add a “Donate” button on your site bro. I’m loving it, and you deserve the funds.

    Thanks a ton.


  56. evertt de sousa September 17th

    muito bom parabéns agora é so saber utilizar a tecnica


  57. Huy Nguyen September 17th

    exactly what I need! thanks so much


  58. Nisa September 17th

    Its very nice n useful .. please provide more n more for student help.
    thanks


  59. veerendra September 17th

    lovely work !


  60. binocle September 17th

    So it’s your fault if we see this kind of things everywhere these days? ^__^

    Thanks for the clear and easy tut


  61. mert September 17th

    great work. awesomee


  62. Joseph Johnston September 17th

    There’s one thing I would add for people who’ve not used the pen tool too much, to make sure the pen tool is in paths mode, not shape layers mode.


  63. xdreamer September 17th

    i didn’t like the last couple steps , but it still a fine work.

    thanks for sharing


  64. Spage September 18th

    Here is what I made. Awesome tutorial.
    http://img522.imageshack.us/my.php?image=glowme9.jpg
    But some kind of s*** i the middle, going to correct it.


  65. Navdeep September 18th

    lovely tut


  66. Danny September 18th

    Well done.


  67. C.C. September 18th

    Yeah, this tutorial kicks ass. You know how to create a beautiful tutorial. it was nice and easy ;)


  68. jimrb22 September 18th

    Thanks for sharing. :) Great tut.


  69. PiticStyle September 18th

    Great tutorials! Congrats`


  70. kivo September 18th

    very easy to use tutorial. THANKS!! look forward to using this on my next project. ill send you samples when im done!


  71. Jennifer Lee September 18th

    whoa! Awesome stuff! I totally have to try this out!! Thanks for the awesome tutorial! >__


  72. Sabbir September 18th

    no mre to say than this
    “marvelous”


  73. Ali September 18th

    thank you! awesome tutorial.. this is what a pro designer needs to know!


  74. Ali September 18th

    actually it was hard at the first to believe you could do this without using any special filter! well done


  75. Khurram Mumtaz September 18th

    Great work dude


  76. mark rushworth September 18th

    cant stroke path in CS2 it dunt appear in the context box!


  77. yea September 18th

    Nice tutorial. but how I can select the Thin to set it on Blending Options? when I go on Bleding Options I automatic Select the whole background :D


  78. tewoos September 18th

    really great tutorial, thanks for sharing…


  79. brandy September 18th

    “Step 4:

    Now set the opacity of your layer to “Overlay”…”

    this should say “blending mode”, not “opacity”, but that’s a small error. :)

    i appreciate that you provide a bit of thought behind what you are doing, rather than just telling the exact steps. you could do more of this, though… also, it might be useful to some to know exactly what the blending effects are doing. (i.e., what exactly is color dodge doing? not everyone knows these things.)

    i think people like it here because it is clean and simple to understand; you’ve definitely started out well!


  80. mary Martin September 18th

    This is awesome! I have done things similar, but not this easy. Thanks so much for all the pointers. They will help me so much.


  81. Daniel September 19th

    nice!


  82. Hellgrace September 19th

    Awesome tutorial,and a marvelous effect

    well done


  83. alberto rodriguez September 19th

    Loved it, thank you very much


  84. gus September 19th

    Simulate pressure? Never heard of it before, thanks!


  85. Website Design September 19th

    It’s beautiful :) Great work.


  86. ader10 September 19th

    For the guy who asked about GIMP…

    Duplicate your “clouds” layer
    Colors > Curves

    Make a sine graph with the preview on and you’ll figure out what to do from there


  87. Juan Carlos September 19th

    wow! Thank You!

    See You!:) Saludillos!


  88. fernando September 19th

    Nice work thak´s for this tip, this tutorial was very cool
    XD


  89. Photoshop Tutorials September 19th

    Wow such an awesome tutorial. Thanks a lot for sharing this excellent tutorial.


  90. Dean September 19th

    Thats very cool. You can turn this into a poster.


  91. ANYONE INTERESTED IN ANIMATING THIS September 19th

    Check out http://www.ayatoweb.com/ae_tips_e.html

    It’s After Effects, and this guy was so far ahead of his time. We used this at Fox6 XETV and it got us an emmy.


  92. G. Eren September 19th

    your tutorials really nice.. congratulations..


  93. Marc September 19th

    WOHAA…

    What can I say?
    Fab, this is just fab!

    Many thanks,
    and keep up the good work!


  94. Dennis September 19th

    Nice tutorial - thanks alot. This seems to be a very nice tutorial site.
    Thanks alot for sharing.
    Regards
    Dennis


  95. Jenny September 20th

    That’s very cool


  96. Alex September 20th

    this tutorial changed my life :)


  97. Toad064 September 20th

    Truely one of the greatest tuts I’ve seen.


  98. aNGEL September 20th

    amazing.. thanks for this tut


  99. Markow September 20th

    Very nice tutorial, pretty much easy to do, even if you dont have a lot experience with Photoshop…

    With the help of the comments here I managed to solve the path-making-problems… Hehe

    Thanks very much!


  100. tree September 20th

    This has to be the best tutorial I have ever seen. I am so glad I did not go to sleep and miss seeing it!
    This is so worth failing my exam tomorrow for. :)


  101. dhrumin jariwala September 20th

    that’s gr8…….. keep it up!!!
    thanks buddy….


  102. nalu September 20th

    uwah…. beautifful , I’m so happy now! At last I found this tutorial .
    thank you so much =D
    I’ll practise this soon to make wallpaper, Mr. Collis


  103. Miguel September 20th

    Man this is great work i have been trying to learn how to do this kind of things for a while now and never found a tutorial as clear and precise not to mention easy to follow, great website!


  104. Elvie September 20th

    mark rushworth:
    im using CS2 also. you have to select Paths AFTER you select PEN TOOL. the button is at the bar on top (by default) below the “File, Edit, Image,…” bar. a icon of a pen inside a box.

    hope that you’ll find that.


  105. ciaran September 21st

    for those who couldnt get the tappered edges to work, make sure the brusgh hardness is set to 0% and the same for all the settings in brush dynamics. This worked for me and I had spent ages trying to get it working.
    thanks for the tutorial!!!


  106. Alex September 21st

    yep, i’ve also created me a new wallpaper.. you deserve a million bucks


  107. Aaron September 21st

    I am having an issue with step #7. When I select the Pen Tool and right-click, my option for the “stroke path” is grayed out not letting me select it.

    What could be the problem?


  108. DP September 21st

    Wow, man… that is truly a sweet tutorial… Best I’ve seen in a looonnnnng time. Thanks for the awesome addition to the arsenal !


  109. luu September 21st

    where can i download the sample?


  110. liza September 21st

    thanks for the tutorial, its excellent!


  111. VIKAS September 21st

    wonderfull nothing else


  112. zee7 September 21st

    Great Tutorial i got lot of thing from this one thanks for sharing your knowledge with us.

    Thank you very much.

    Waiting For more goOOd work from you!.


  113. Cara September 21st

    This is a great tutorial. Although when I wen to add my last few layers (for the added color) it made everything really dull and my “glowing” items kind of just faded out…….I must have done something wrong.


  114. Cara September 21st

    Oh and here is what I came out with………..It’s not as eye catching as the finished product in the tutorial……..I need to figure out how to make my glow even brighter


  115. Emily September 22nd

    In step 7, when I try to get the stroke path, the option is greyed out. Any ideas why?
    I’d really love to finish this tutorial, but I am frustrated and stuck on this point =/


  116. samith chathuranga fernando September 22nd

    “excelant”
    i was waiting to get like this tutorial
    thanks somuch
    vary cool and wonderful
    so can go ahead with this ladder.


  117. Soumya September 22nd

    Amazing tutorial! Superb tips! Keep it up! This is very very helpful!


  118. Bird September 22nd

    thanks man, i will use this in some of my sigs


  119. brego September 22nd

    thank you my friend… it really looks nice


  120. Mahado September 22nd

    thank you so much! it’s a great tutorial…


  121. Billy September 22nd

    Finally, I’ve been looking for a tutorial for this. Really nice!!! thanks! :)


  122. kbp September 22nd

    goood tuut very goood!


  123. Shikha September 22nd

    Great tutorial. Simple and very well explained.
    thank you!!


  124. Shikha September 22nd

    i am so glad i found this site!