Hi this is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I 'm going to show you how to create a dramatic portrait neon effect.
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I provided a set of custom smoke brushes that we'll use later.
Its link is in my video's description or project files. Open a photo that you'd like to use
for this project. I downloaded this one from Shutterstock. The effect will look best when
the background is dark and your subject is lit at an angle, so it has a lot of shadows. First,
click your foreground color to open the color picker. Pick a bright color for your neon.
Then, press Enter or Return. Notice your foreground color is now the color you just picked.
Open your brush tool and brush picker. Pick a soft round brush. I'm using a brush size of 12 pixels,
but feel free to adjust this amount based on the size of your photo and its resolution.
The Hardness is 0% and its opacity and flow are 100%. Open your pen tool and choose Path. Place
it where you'd like your shape to begin. Click and release. Place your tool at a second location
and click to make your first work path. Release and place your cursor at its third location and
click and release. To complete my path, I'll click back on the first point. Click the new layer icon
to make a new layer. Place your cursor directly on the path and right-click or secondary click to
open the fly-out list. Click stroke path. When you see this panel, pick "Brush".
To hide the path, press Ctrl or Cmd +H.
Double-click the top layer to open its layer style window. Click Inner Glow and the color box.
Pick white. The blend mode is normal and the opacity is 100%. The technique is softer,
the Source is center, the Choke is 0% and the Size is 6 pixels. The Contour is linear and the
Range is 50%. Click outer glow and the color box. Pick the same bright color as you picked earlier.
The blend mode is Linear Dodge the opacity is 50% and the size is 20 pixels.
Click Drop Shadow and pick the same color. The blend mode is linear dodge and the opacity
is 70%. The angle is 30 degrees, the distance and the spread are 0 and the size is 40 pixels.
Let's save some space in the layers panel by collapsing the effects.
Make a new layer and reveal the path by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + H. Open your brush tool
and brush picker. I'll make its size 125 pixels, but again feel free to adjust the amount.
Press "P" to open your pen tool and right-click or secondary- click directly on the path.
Click "Stroke Path". Then, click OK. Hide the path, change the blend mode to Linear Dodge
and reduce the fill to 30%. If we reduce the opacity instead of the fill, the neon tube
wouldn't be as bright. To illustrate this, I reduced the opacity instead of the Fill to
show you the difference. We'll place the two layers that comprise our neon into a folder.
Shift-click Layer 1 to make it active, as well, and press Ctrl or Cmd. Let's name it "Neon".
To hide the neon behind our subject, click the layer mask icon to make a layer mask
next to the folder. Make the subject active. We need to make a selection of our subject.
There are many ways to select it, however, for the purposes of this tutorial, open your Quick
Selection Tool. If you're using version CC 2018 or later, click the "Select Subject" button, which
automatically selects our subject. If you are using an earlier version, drag the quick selection
tool over the inside of your subject to select it. To remove areas of the selection, press and hold
Alt or Option as you drag over those areas. Open your brush tool and make the layer mask active.
Brush over the area of the neon that you'd like to mask out. Deselect it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd +D.
Make a new layer and click this icon to invert your foreground and background colors.
You can also press "x" to do this. Click the foreground color and pick black.
Go to Filter, Render and Clouds. Change the blend mode to Linear Dodge and reduce its fill to 40%.
Next, we'll confine our smoke to just around the neon light. Place the clouds into a folder. Let's
name it "Smoke". Alt-click or Option-click the layer mask icon to make an inverted layer mask
next to the smoke folder. Press "B" to open your brush tool and change its size to 500 pixels.
Unhide the path and press "p" to open back your pen tool. Right-click directly on the path
and click "Stroke Path". Then, hide the path again. Make the clouds layer active and make
an inverted layer mask next to it. Open back your brush tool and open your brush picker. After you
install the brush set I provided, open it and pick a brush you like. Feel free to experiment
with them until you find one you like. I'll click "Smoke 9". To adjust its size, make sure your
CapsLock key is off and press the right or left bracket key on your keyboard. Click once to stamp
your brush onto your image. What you're actually doing is stamping white onto your layer mask,
which is revealing the green clouds through the white areas. Think of layer masks as stencils. The
white areas reveal the layer next to it, while the black areas conceal it. You can stamp the brush at
various angles by either opening back your brush picker and rotating the arrow on this widget
or by pressing "R" on your keyboard as you rotate your canvas. I prefer this method,
since I can immediately see how the angle looks on my image and can make rotate adjustments much quicker.
To rotate it back to its original angle, press and hold Shift + R as you rotate it until
it snaps back in place. Close the folder and make a copy of it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + J.
Reduce its Fill anywhere from 30 to 50%. Make your subject active. Click the adjustment layer icon
and click "Hue/Saturation". Check "Colorize". For the Hue,
type in 120. For the saturation, type in 100 and for the Lightness type in minus 25.
Click the adjustment layer icon again and click "Curves". The curves panel basically shows the
tonal range of an image from the darkest to the lightest along a diagonal line on a graph.
We can adjust our image's highlights, mid-tones, and shadows by simply dragging the line.
Go to the middle of the line and drag it straight down to approximately here. Right now, the curves
adjustment layer is affecting the Hue/ Saturation layer, as well as our subject, however, we don't
want it to affect Hue/Saturation. To resolve this, drag the curves layer below Hue/Saturation. Next,
we'll remove some of the green color cast from our subject's darkest tones. To do this,
double-click an empty area of the Hue/Saturation layer to open its layer style window. We'll use
"Blend If", which uses luminosity to blend layers. "This Layer" represents our active layer,
which is the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. The "Underlying Layer" comprises all the layers below
Hue/Saturation. We can make smooth transitions by Alt or Option-clicking in the middle of this
triangular shape. This splits the shape in two. Drag the right half approximately this far. The
more you drag it, the more it punches the darkest tones of our subject through the green smoke.
Reduce the Fill to 50%.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. Thanks for watching!