Create another layer called Extra Spiral glow and use the same settings as in Step 7. Instead of adding a red glow, I’ve added a yellow glow but all of the other settings for the outer glow layer style are the same.ġ2. Now add a glow to the Spiral layer in the same way you did in step in Step 5. Select the eraser tool and erase alternate sections of the line so that the line appears to go behind Superman as well as in front.ġ1.

However, we want to give the impression that the line is wrapping around Superman rather than just appearing in front of him. This produces a nice clean spiral in front of Superman. Then on the Paths panel, click on the Stroke path with Brush.Ĭlick here to read a tutorial on how to use the Pen Tool In Photoshop.ġ0. When you’re happy with the spiral, set your paintbrush to a hard, round, size 9 brush. Use the Pen tool to draw a spiral shape across superman’s body. Create a new layer and name it “Spiral Glow”. The next light effect I wanted to add was a bright orange glow around Superman. This will produce a nice, more authentic looking glow.ĩ.

Start to paint around each of the letters in the word super. Select a very soft round brush and set the opacity of the brush to about 20%. You won’t see any change yet because there is nothing on that layer yet – that’s our next step.Ĩ. This needs to be smaller – in my case I set it to 51px. Drag that layer underneath the Super text layer.Īpply a layer style again – choose Outer Glow – leave all the settings the same as before EXCEPT the Size. To make it look like the individual letters have a light effect applied to them we need to add a little more glow.Ĭreate a new layer and name it “Extra Glow”. So now we have a bit of a glow coming from the word Super.ħ. Set the Spread to 0% but give a fairly large size – this is something you can play around with to get the effect you like. Set the Blend Mode to Screen, Opacity to 100% and choose whatever colour you would like your light effect to be. With the new Super text layer selected in the Layers panel, click on the “add a layer style” button on the layers panel and choose Outer Glow from the drop-down menu. The colour is white and the font used here is called MA Sexy and it has a nice loopy handwriting feel about it. Using the Move tool, move Superman in the “Cutout” layer down to the bottom left of the image.Ĥ. To make the light effects stand out a bit more, add a black background underneath the cutout layer, by creating a new Layer in the Layers panel and filling it with black paint using the Paint Bucket tool. Once you’ve made your selection, hit Ctrl + J (Windows) or Cmd + J (Mac) to add your selection to a new layer. On this particular background, it’s easy to select Superman using the magic wand and then do a little bit of tidying up using the quick mask. The first thing to do is separate Superman from his background. I’m using this picture of Superman which can be downloaded from .Ģ. In Photoshop, open the image you want to apply the effects to. If you’re a beginner getting started with Photoshop, you’ll learn how to use layer effects to create an eye-catching neon effect.ġ. You’ll notice that the Photoshop interface looks a bit old in the screengrabs, as does the actor who plays Superman 🙂 There have, of course, been many updates to Photoshop since then, but this method of creating a neon effect still works perfectly well, if you want to try it out. *Update October 2022: I first wrote this Photoshop tutorial for my students, waaaaaaay back in 2008.

Neon text layer style photoshop