NEON TEXT HELP

Donald,

I looked at the web site you gave and essentially what they have done is use an outline font with the foreground color set to a "neon" like color and added a glow.

Try this and see if it comes close to what you want. This is just one way to do it and probably not the best<g>:

If you have an outline font, use it. If not, you may be able to approximate one. For the sake of this discussion, let’s assume you don’t have one. Also, let’s open a new document and use the "lucida handwriting" font and set the bold option on. You can use any font you want but this one connects some of the letters and I think it may help to create the illusion of neon lights.

1. set the foreground color white and the background to black.

2. open a new document, set the "contents" option to fill with background color.

3. set the foreground color to the color you want to make the neon (I set background to white).

4. using the text tool, add your text to the document. (I used 72 point text in my test of this procedure.)

5. simplify the text layer. (right click on the text layer in the layer palette and select simplify layer from the popup menu.)

(if you are using an outline font, go to step 9)

6. duplicate the text layer. hide the top text layer by clicking on the "eye" symbol.

7. make the bottom text layer the active layer.

8. control click on the bottom text layer in the layer palette, this will give you a selection of the text.

7. from the menu select->modify->contract and set the number of pixels to 1 or 2. you will need to play with it depending on the font and the size. For the 72 point text I used, 2 pixels was best. click on ok.

8. press the del key (or from the menu edit->clear) to delete the center of the text. You now have a text outline. remove the selection (ctrl+d)

9. duplicate the bottom text layer.

10. with the middle text layer active, apply a gaussian blur with radius approximately 2 pixels. set the blending mode of this layer to screen. This softens the edges of the text and gives a mild glow.

11. make the top text layer active and make it visable. set the blending mode to screen or linear dodge. I preferred linear dodge.

12. apply a gaussian blur to the top layer using a large radius, something on the range of 7 to 20 pixels. You’ll need to play with it to see what works best. fine tune it by adjusting the opacity.

merge down the text layers.

If you have the hidden powers free add-on (HPAIII), that has an inner and outer glow action. you can experiment using that to see if you get a better glow effect. I didn’t try it.

Another variation you can try is to instead of steps 6 to 10, you can use white text, simplify, select, set foreground to the neon color, use edit stroke 4 pixels centered. Then add a layer above, with the selection still there fill with the neon color, deselect and blur to give the glow as in 11 and 12.

Feel free to play.

Let us know if this was helpful.

Bob

Hey,

I appreciate the reply. Thanks for the effort in testing your solution instead of just posting!

I had to reload my software and I will try your reply tonight.

P.S. Did you test this on Photoshop Elements? I am currently using photoshop elements 2.0. I think that some of the menus are different on photoshop. I will post my findings if all steps can be implemented

Don

Don, you should be able to replicate it. Bob definitely used Elements, and I believe he runs PSE 2.

Beth is correct. I use PSE 2.

Bob

Donald,

Just a quick followup, after trying out a few more things, I think I’ve decided I do like the stonger glow you get from duplicating the top "glow" layer (leave it in linear dodge blending mode). This lets you use a larger blur radius in step 12 if you want. Reduce the opacity of the top layer after duplicating, if desired, to fine tune it.

I also tried out the simple outer glow action in the HPAIII free add-on and that worked well also.

Bob

Bob,

I agree that having a "glow" enhances the whole neon effect. Should I duplicate the top text layer after STEP 11 or after STEP 12?

Is this HPAIII outerglow/normal feature the one the layer styles palette?

You gave me more to work with than the tech support groups! If I can get the glow radiating from the letters without it looking too blurry, I will be a happy camper.

Just a side note. If I want to actually animate/illuminate this font will the elements animation feature work? I was told that I would need something like Microsoft Gif. Animator!

Don

Hi Bob, Great tutorial, I was able to follow it just fine! I am just leaving beginnerdom. I added Flaming Pears Chroma Solarize filter, and WOW, it is nice! Thank you for the lesson, I love these tutorials that you all put up here, they make it so much fun!
Jane

Don,
About 6 months ago, I downloaded a set of layer styles called Wow Neon. It may do what you want if you first select the part of the image you want the glow around. I can’t remember whether they came from the Adobe Photoshop site (you could search there, it’s great) or from somewhere out there on the Web. The Adobe site is: <http://share.studio.adobe.com/axBrowseProduct.asp?p=2>

John

Don,

Duplicate it after step 12.

Is this HPAIII outerglow/normal feature the one the layer styles palette?

No, the layer style outer glow is different. The Elements version doesn’t let you adjust the color of the glow and it just doesn’t look good for this use.

The HPA III tools outer glow action is actually pretty nice. Every thing is put in a separate layer, it implements a mask to control where the glow shows (keeps the glow "outer"), and puts a levels adjustment layer on top of the glow layer. You can tweak the levels, adjust the opacity of the layer (apply any other effect or filter you want to that layer as well). Gives you a lot of control. You can download the tools free from http://hiddenelements.com/freetools.html
They’re also on the Adobe Exchange but I don’t have the link handy.

Just a side note. If I want to actually animate/illuminate this font will

the elements animation feature work?

Yes, it will work but it’s not the most efficient way to create an animated gif. Elements doesn’t optimize the gif and it requires each frame to be a complete image (no incremental capability) so the size of the gif grows pretty fast. You can get a much smaller animated gif using a program designed to assemble them.

Note I said assemble. Elements is great for making the individual images and frames, it just doesn’t assemble them efficiently. You can take the images created in Elements and assemble them into an efficient animated gif using a specialized program. There are lots of them out there. You may want to look at one of the grand daddy gif makers "gif construction set" which does a great job and is only $25 or so. See
http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/gifcon.html

I’m not really recommending any particular gif program. I just used that one because I know about it, it’s been around a long time, and it let’s you access pretty much all of the capabilities of the gif89a spec. Feel free to look at others.

Bob

Thanks Jane,

This one was fun. This would be a good one for Ray to make a "neon museum" similar to the ones he did for snowflakes and gradients.

I added Flaming Pears Chroma Solarize filter, and WOW, it is nice!

I would enjoy seeing that! Could you post it somewhere?

Bob

FYI,

While I was browsing, I came across this web page you may find useful: http://www.neonshop.com/krypton/colors.html

It has JPG neon color charts which you could use to pick off colors for use in your neon images.

Bob

I would be glad to host your images, everybody, in the same way I did for the gradients and the snowflakes. Just let me know if you’d like that and I’ll remove the gradients.

Ray

Everybody,

My neons are starting to come along fine. I noticed that fonts that are thin or outline work better. Tubular or Bazooka fonts are too thick. I am going to keep experimenting.

I down loaded the HPA111 and I get it’s feature screen. I keep getting prompt to select before the outer glow can be applied. Should I bother with this technique or keep the original 12 step technique? The 12 step is getting easier. I will not do the HPA way if it is not give better results.

I will look into the animated program you suggested. My end result is having the font get brighter and darker, NOT blinking on and off. The same feature in my original example post. At least the neon fonts are beginning to look 3 dimensional and not so flat!

Thanks,

Hi Bob, These are indeed fun, here are 3,
<http://www.pbase.com/image/25553542> and the next two pictures. I love these fun projects that you all come up with.
Ray’s galleries of snowflakes, gradients, and others are good for me too, as I get to see how other people do projects. And I learn a lot from this.
Thanks,
Jane

Hi Don,

I’m glad it’s coming along! Definitely keep experimenting.

I’m puzzled about the HPA III prompt to select. When I run the HPA III outer glow action I get informational prompts that tell what to do but I’ve not gotten one that says anything about making a selection. As long as you started with the neon text on a separate layer and made it the active one before running the outer glow, you should be able to just click through the prompts to the end. The exception being adjusting the amount of blur to apply when that comes up.

I would run the HPA II outer glow at least once just to see what it does and how it compares with the other method. Then, pick the method I felt did the better job. There’s a lot of subjective feel here so personal preference should decide.

Regarding the animation, I think you’ll be happy with the gif program. If you are going to be doing sequential animation like the sample you cited, you’ll definitely need the optimization it will provide.

Looking at that animation, it looks like they mainly turned the glow on and off. That should be easy to control.

Bob

Hi,

How can I attach a file to this forum? I was going to post "my" neon test for everybody.

Don

Donald,

Many people here have "rented" a web space at pbase.com. Some people have set up elaborate gallerys and some, such as myself, only use it for displaying an image such as your purpose. They charge about $20US a year and supply all needed tools. It seems to be well run and a good deal.

Nancy

Pbase.com is the easiest, the cheapest, and the best of all the picture album sites. In fact they are so good that I feel as if I don’t really need a web site, they do what I need, they have picture albums.
Jane

I wish we could post photos to the forum. I would really like to see how your neon test came out. Let us know if you find a temporary place to post it.