Easy Way To Create Neon Lightning Effect

I use Photoshop 7 for this tutorial and will show you how to create a neon lightning effect in a view easy to follow steps. this tutorial is created for the photoshop “beginners”.

 

This will be the end result of this tutorial:

 

So lets start of with a new Photoshop document “Ctrl + N key”, set width and height to 500 pixel and click OK.

 

 

Set the foreground color to 1B1B1B.

 

 

And fill the layer “Layer 1” using the Paint Bucked Tool “Press G key”.

 

Now press “T” or click on the Horizontal Type Tool and set the text settings as shown in the picture below.

 

Select the area where you would like to add your text and type “LIGHT” or anything you want.

 

 

Now create a new layer “Ctrl + Shift + N”, select the Brush Tool “Press B Key” and draw some lines to connect the letters to each other. (take the time to finish this correctly, you can use other tools to connect the letters to each other if needed).

 

TIP: If you are not that good in drawing perfect lines then there is an other way to connect the letters. I just Duplicated the text layer “Right click the text layer and click Duplicate Layer”, Rastersized the Duplicated layer “Right click the duplicated layer and click Rastersize Layer” and just copy/pasted some parts of that layer to connect the letters.

 

This is what I ended up with: I also added a little point to the letter “I”.

 

 

(You can see I have a lot of layers now, this is because I copy/pasted a lot of pieces from the duplicated layer to make perfect connections, because my drawing skills are limited.)

 

Now we need to Merge these layers together, link all the layers together “except the background layer” and click “Crtl + E”. You now only have 2 layers left, a background layer and a text layer.

 

 

Its time to do some experimenting, double click your text layer and add some Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow, Inner Glow, Outer Glow and a little Bevel and Emboss. Play with it to get your own style.

 

 

I ended up with this, if you like this you can use the settings below.

 

 

Now duplicate the layer, to add a little more glow.

 

 

Select the duplicated layer and add a Gaussian Blur. Go to Filter, Blur, Gaussian Blur.

 

 

 

Set the Gaussian Blur to “1,5” and click OK.

 

 

I changed the Opacity and Fill rate as shown in the screenshot below.

 

 

This is the result I ended up with. If you are not satisfied with the end result, try using different colors such as, pink or blue. I hope you liked it and hope you learned something from it.