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http://pshero .co m/pho to sho p-tuto rials/graphic-design/electrifying-glo w-album-art

Electrifying Glow Album Art

Introduction
T his tutorial is a bit involved and assumes that you are prof icient enough in Photoshop to f ollow along without me holding your hand. T hat being said, lets jump right in.

Step 1
I took this photo at a show T he Killers played at Madison Square Garden in New York this past summer packed house, great crowd anyway, heres the photo. T he image is included in the lesson f iles available f or download at the end of the tutorial. Lets f irst start by drawing a nice curvy path with the pen tool that well use as our main wrapping glow line. In the Paths palette be sure to rename the path so you dont loose it when we create a new one.

Step 2
Create a new layer called "First Stroke" and switch to the Brush tool. Choose the 5 pixel round brush with hard edges, set the f oreground color to white and click back to the Pen tool. Now simply Right-Click (Mac: Control-Click) anywhere on the path and choose Stroke Path. When the dialog box pops up choose Brush and Simulate Pressure. T he pressure simulation will ensure that the stroke tapers of f at

each end.

Step 3
With your tool of choice remove the sections along the stroke that should be behind your subject. I use the Pen tool.

Step 4
Add an Inner and Outer Glow as shown below. T he blue color Im using in both styles is #6d9bf f . T his will be the only layer style well be using and well copy and paste this one onto subsequent layers as we go.

Step 5
Duplicate the "First Stroke" layer, clear the layer styles and add a 6px Gaussian Blur. T his will add an additional glowing ef f ect around the original stroke.

Step 6
Create a new layer called "Particles", activate the Path we created earlier and switch to the Brush tool. Choose a round brush of 3 pixels with a hardness of 0%, then under the Brushes palette set Shape Dynamics and Scattering to the f ollowing. (*note: make sure your f oreground color is still white)

Step 7

Switch back to the Pen tool and stroke the path just like bef ore, then remove the overlapping sections. T his time the eraser tool will probably be the easiest way to remove the overlapping dots. Copy the layer style f rom the "First Stroke" layer and paste them into the "Particles" layer. (*note: T his can be done easily by holding down the Option (PC: Alt) key while clicking and dragging the style icon f rom one layer to the other.)

Step 8
Create a new layer called "Second Stroke", create a new path similar but not the same as the original with the Pen tool (or duplicate the earlier path and change it a little) then repeat steps 2-5 but this time use a 3 pixel brush and reduce your Gaussian Blur to 3 on the copy layer. Play with a lower opacity on these layers until the ef f ect looks right to you and dont f orget to copy the layer style onto the "Second Stroke" layer.

Step 9
Now that the glow ef f ects have been completed its time to really have some f un with this image. Click on the Background layer and duplicate it by pressing Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J). Choose Image>Adjustments>T hreshold f rom the main menu and use a setting around 85. T his will obviously vary depending on your application of the technique.

Step 10
Grab the Magic Wand tool by pressing W and then click anywhere in the f ield of black. T his may not have selected all the black if there are isolated pockets so choose Select>Similar f rom the main menu to ensure all the black pixels are selected. Invert the selection by pressing Command-Shif t-I (PC: Ctrl-Shif t-I) then drag the layer to the trash and select the Background layer. (*note: your selection will still be active.

Step 11
Duplicate the selected area by pressing Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J). T his will create a new layer with just the selection copied onto it. Call this layer "Partial". T he selection will be gone and it wont look like anything has happened, so create a new layer between the "Partial" layer and the "Background" layer, call it "Black" and f ill the entire layer with black.

Step 12
Click back to the "Partial" layer and use the eraser to remove all those annoying artif acts outside the artwork that we want to keep.

Step 13
For my f inished image I added the graphic as an CD album cover.