learn how to design a neon vector ring to play surround yourself in
easy-to-follow steps firstly we're going to take an image of ourselves in
Photoshop and create a dark and a moody atmosphere then we're going to take the
image back into illustrator this is where we're going to add the neon vector
ring effect today's tutorial is easy to follow and a step by step process and if
you want to skip the process of making the image in Photoshop skip to the
timecard in the corner however I suggest that you do watch the first part because
you will learn a neat technique on how to make an image darker in a skillful
manner you want to use a high quality resolution image and mine isn't that
great today I forgot to turn on the autofocus on my DSLR so it's kind of a
bit pixelated firstly double-click the layer to unlock it and then press
command or ctrl J to duplicate the layer for a non-destructive workflow you add a
color balance adjustment layer and the trick here is to bring you image down to
a more kind of cold tone of color away from a bright and warm tone so play
around with your settings until you achieve that
then add another adjustment layer but this time you want to lower the
saturation a tiny bits third adjustment layer that we're going to use today is
the brightness and contrast layer where we want to bring down the brightness of
the image you should have three adjustment layers at this juncture you
can take the eraser tool the soft brush and a lower opacity and use that to
remove part of the Brennus and contrast layer over yourself which will highlight
the focal point of the image
now take a dark black in the color palette and draw a shape it with the
entire image like so lower the opacity of the layer by a small amount we want
to rasterize this shape so we can actually edit it and then take the
eraser tool once again this time remove the middle of the dark shape ever so
slightly this is going to reveal yourself in the image a little bit more
and also the surrounding areas
you should end up with a pretty decent looking image like mine here with enough
of yourself being shown and also the objects around you this would allow the
neon vector ring to shine light upon this later
save your image as a JPEG in Photoshop and then head over to add a really
straighter for the next pilot is aerial
we're now going to design the neon vectoring effects so follow along and
step by step process as each part of the tutorial is essential
open up your image and then resize it down we want to make it fairly small
because the effects we're going to be using today use quite a lot of memory
but you don't want to make the image too small so once precise to lock it down in
place
we want to select just a stroke with a white color and then press L for the
ellipse tool we're going to make a ring shape it's going to be surrounding
ourselves in the vector image design you can now press F the direct selection
tool to edit the shape of the ring itself but I'm just going to leave -
standard press Shift + W for the width tool we'll come over to the toolbar and
access it here this is a very important step you can make the part of the Ring
closest to the camera a little bit thicker and then the part for this away
thinner this will give the illusion of realism and also a 3d effect
gonna want to position the ring perfectly on yourself on the image and
we will cut away part of it later but first we're going to add the neon
effects using the appearance panel now I actually made a tutorial back on
Monday about the appearance panel so if you missed that and you want to check it
out there's a card in the top right corner
now I line the stroke of the ring which is going to turn the vector stroke into
a vector shape
the first effect that we're going to add in the appearance panel is going to be
an outer glow make the blend mode normal and then choose your color of choice
with the preview box checked I'm gonna go for a pink today on my design but you
can choose whatever floats your boat
next enhance the outer glow effect add a new fill and drag it below the other
layers in the appearance panel
at the feel of the same color as you have to glow and proceed to apply a
Gaussian blur to that fill
play with the settings here whilst having the preview box checked a quick
tip that I forgot to show in the actual video was that you might want to drop
the opacity of the fill white layer down a tiny bit maybe to around something
like 80 percent
now grab the eraser to an illustrator and carefully rub out the area of the
neon ring that is not going to be seen because you're in the way again this is
just gonna further the realism of your design now for the next step is on the
most important things in this tutorial for making a neat and realistic design
press P for the pen tool and drew in a shape over yourself where the neon ring
would shine it's glow one flick the stroke over to a fear with shifting eggs
and then add a Gaussian blur
bring the neon ring to the very front of all design elements and then select the
shape that we just made head into the transparency window and change the blend
mode to overlay or soft light copy this with command or control C and then paste
exactly in place with command or control F now change this blend mode to either
soft light or overlay depending on the first choice that you made just now now
as you can see the lighting effect looks really neat and real you need to use
this method of drawing in shapes playing a Gaussian blur and then changing the
blend mode over your design if you do this multiple times and be patient you
can end up with something that looks like this but yet do take your time and
do have patience and enjoy the design process if you thought today's tutorial
is useful and fun share this video in social media and also drop a like down
below leave a comment letting me know that you
learned something today and be sure to check back in tomorrow with more graphic
design content so until next time design your future today peace