Glow Effect

In this tutorial, we will be creating an easy and great looking surreal glow effect in Adobe Photoshop.

(Click me of High-Res)

Image published with permissions by the author, Jackson Hines; http://www.atomicstud.com

Step 1

Open an image that has a wide variety of colors and copy the background layer twice by pressing command/control+J or by dragging onto the new layer icon. To start, click on "Layer 1" to highlight it (Remember: when you highlight any layer in the layers panel, you're telling photoshop that you want to work with that layer only). So our highlighted layer will look like the image on the right: We also want to turn the visibility of "Layer 1 Copy" off as well by clicking on the eye...

Step 2

We need to add a blur to "Layer 1" so go to Filters > Gaussian Blur and add a raduis of 25px and then hit OK and the result will look like the image on the right.

Step 3

Go to "Layer 1 Copy" and highlight it (make it blue) and then go to Filters > Distort > Diffuse Glow and use a graininess of 1, glow amount of 4-10, and a clear amount of 8-15 (the last two can be changed to anything within the best range). Hit OK when done and the result will look like the image on the right.

Step 4

We need to move our blurred layer above our deffuse glow layer so highlight "Layer 1 Copy" and drag it below "Layer 1" and then reduce to opacity of "Layer 1" to 80%. Click on "Layer 1" to highlight it once again and change the blending mode to Overlay or Hard Light.

And that's about it for this tutorial!!

Note:

I realize this isn't the best quality "glow effect" just keep in mind that this is quick and easy and aimed for beginners. I'll include some layer masking in this tutorial in time though!