Neon Text

I am going to show you an easy tutorial on how to make a neon sign in Photoshop. This will show you some tricks with the pen tool and a few blending options to make this effect. This might be a way you could make a logo for your site or just something fun to mess around with.



First I am going to start off with a 600X300px canvas to give me plenty of room to work with. On a new layer create text and I wrote "Neon Sign" with Formal436 BT font and size 60px. Just use whatever font you want that you like the shape of.



Other neon sign tutorials I have seen in the past just used regular font to make glow, but I didn't like the effect as much as the method I am going to show you in the next steps. Instead of me using the actual font to make the neon glow I am going to use the pin tool to trace inside of each letter. To me this gives more of the look of an actual neon sign you would see at a restaurant or anywhere else. Before I start tracing I need to pick a color and size brush to use so click on your brush tool and pick a 9px size. Then just pick a bright color you want to use for the path stroke. I used the color #00B4FF, which is a brighter blue color. Now start a new layer to trace in and I zoomed in on the text about 400% by hitting ctrl and the plus (+) sign. You don't have to zoom in that much, but I did just to give you a nice view of what I am talking about.



Now click on your pin tool and make sure it has these settings:



After that I am going to click at the bottom center of the first line of the "N" using the pen tool, then click again straight above the first one at the top of the letter like this:



You want to just get the basic shape of the letter. My final outline of the first letter looks like this:



After that right mouse click with the pin tool on the line you just created and a little menu should pop up. Click on "Stroke Path..."



After you click that another window will pop up and just click OK.

My stroke path result:



Now to remove your stroke path and move on to the next letter, right mouse click on your path with the pin tool still active, and in the window that pops up click on "Delete Path". Now Trace the other letters in a similar fashion. My final trace looks like this:



Now just delete the text layer we made at the beginning and you can see the outline without the text underneath. I always thought the neon signs that had a shape of a guitar were pretty neat so I am going to add a neon shaped guitar into this tutorial. This will use the same exact method as in the last few steps I showed you, so I won't go into full detail on this part. I picked a picture of a guitar I liked off of the internet, traced it using that method in a separate window, and then put the layer in my image with the neon text. Here is the guitar shape I came out with after using the tracing technique and stroking the path.



Now on to actually making it look like a glowing neon sign. Click on the layer with your trace of the "Neon Sign" text and go to the blending options:



First I will do an inner glow with these settings:



For the color on the inner glow I just used white.

Next we will do an outer glow with these settings:



My Final result looks like this:



Then use these settings on the text:

Outer glow:



Inner Glow



So far my image looks like this:



With that you can move around your text and position it how you want it. Also you can add some accents to the image with different colors of neon glows. Instead of me explaining all that I think it is easier if I just show you my result:



I used the same method as explained previously with the pen tool but just changed the colors to look like different neon glows. Now I am going to go one step further and make the sign look like it is actually on a wall with glows and shadows. First here is the picture of a brick wall I found...



Put the brick wall in a new layer behind all the other layers so that it looks like this:



Now to give it the glow effect on the wall you are going to use the pen tool yet again.

Make sure your chosen color is black for the brush first, then choose the pen tool again and make a new layer. Make sure the layer is above the brick layer but below all others. Next I am going to make an outline of the guitar and text with the pen tool like this:



After that right click on the path with the pen tool, still selected, and choose fill path. On the menu that pops up use these settings:



Click OK and then remove your path. For extra effect I am gong to add two simple lines with the pen tool to make the sign look like its hanging on the wall. If you want to go even further you can make the sign parts look like they are connected to each other with black lines, but I didn't think this step was necessary to show you this tutorial. Thanks for reading my tutorial. Here is my final result:

Super Bv:)