This can add a touch of color and drama to your shot.ĭuplicate your layer, then pull up Filter > Artistic > Neon Glow. Have you ever played with neon glow and wondered when the heck you were ever going to use it? Well, it’s time to give it another shot. If you want to get more advanced with your subject selection, you can duplicate the layer, mask it out, and use a large soft white brush to paint the subject back in. If you want to tone down the effect, change the opacity of the effect layer. Try this out with lots of different filters.
When you’ve got it all done, your layers palette should look a little like this: Using blurs tends to look a little funny. Most of the Brush Stroke filters work well with this effect. I used Filter > Brush Strokes > Dark Strokes for this example. Select the layer copy below your subject layer. You should end up with just your subject on a new layer with a nice feather to it (fades at the edges). We want a pretty large feather, so what you input depends on your picture. Use your lasso tool to roughly select the subject of your image.įeather the selection by going to Select > Feather (ctrl+alt+d). This one can be fun… With a picture open, duplicate the layer (as always). Photoshop Technique #2: filter the background Try it on all kinds of shots: portraits, nature shots, you name it. If you want a more dramatic effect, try changing the blending mode to ‘Vivid Light’ instead of ‘Overlay.’ Basically, it softly boosts the contrast. If you look at the before and after, you can see that this method makes the light tones lighter and the dark tones darker while softening it a touch. In the layers palette, change the blending mode from ‘Normal’ to ‘Overlay.’