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Need glowing text tutorial!


Whew... well... that was done using either compositing / FX software such as Adobe After Effects or possibly a 3D rendering app.

You could fake it in Photoshop... but it's not going to look quite the same.

Ironically I was working on a tutorial to fake that in Photoshop, but never finished. Not sure where all my files for that are.

The big difference will be that in that the light areas shift with the moving light source, in Photoshop, you will have a static image, so the light won't shift perspective. Unless you hand draw each frame... which would take pretty much forever. hehe

You can see how it looks in Photoshop... not quite the same... but close. Also, you will be very limited as to the image that is glowing since you need to use some harsh blending modes and adjustment to achieve the glow.
 
STEP 1

You're in luck, I found my original PSD and I think I have the process I was using figured out (I made this like 3 years ago, so I'm relearning what I did heh).

STEP 1:

Make a black background, this is important since the effect relies on building image contrast. I'm betting with enough tweaking you could get it to work with other backgrounds, but for right now... just stick with black.

Choose some text or maybe an image (I never tried with an image, only text). Style it if you want to, it will lend to the effect. I just used a layer style to make it look like beveled metal. Generally this should be a grayscale image, we can color it later.
 
STEP 2

STEP 2:

Duplicate that layer and do a radial blur set to zoom. Filters > blur > radial blur. Then just check mark the box that says "zoom". Now switch the settings for amount to something higher, go a little more than you'll want in the end because some of this will get clipped.
 
STEP 3

STEP 3:

Make a new layer. Draw a vertical line with a thick, feathered brush using something like white. Now gaussian blur that line until it's very very feathered, almost just a blob of translucent glow. See attached image for a better idea of what I'm talking about.
 
STEP 4

STEP 4:

Make a levels adjustment layer. This is what will make the white fuzzy stuff we've been making disappear. The idea here is that the levels are such that the white will only show when these two semi-transparent layers overlap and make the white opaque enough to register with the adjustment layer. See the image for basic settings... but you might need to adjust these for your specific image. Notice how only the streaks where the two overlap are showing... this is what you want because moving this glowy ball layer is what is going to create the animation later.
 
STEP 5

STEP 5:

This is optional, but if you want to add a little color to the text, create a new layer, then make a selection based on the text layer's shape (cmd+click the layer thumbnail). Feather the selection just slightly and fill with the color of your choice. Now reduce the fill opacity quite a bit since you don't want to overpower the effect and switch the blending mode to "color". You can play with settings and blending modes to find the one you like best, but I ended up with these. Subtle is better. :)
 
STEP 6

STEP 6:

Now save this document and switch to ImageReady ( or use the animation palette in CS3 ).

What you want to do is have the initial frame with the glowy ball on one side. Then make a new animation frame... and hold shift while you drag the ball to the other side. Notice while you drag, the glow should light up correctly just like you want the animation... if it doesn't... something is wrong with the file settings and you need to fix them. Once the glowy ball is at the other side in the second animation frame, simply use the "tween" function and specify a few steps in between for the rest of the animation. It will do the rest of the work by changing the position of the layer for each frame. Now just save as a GIF and away you go.

Hope that works out for you. Give it a shot. It's a cool technique that I've been wanting to write up as a tutorial for a while. I've had that PSD sitting around for going on 3 years now and never got around to it. Thanks for the nudge. ;)
 
Still more...

Just to give you some idea of what you can do... these are two other animations that I made using the same technique, but with alterations to the images.
 
Wow mindblender you are really damn good in PS :},I know many great work are done in small softwares.we usually aware of them.
Actually to say i use many other applications for this to be done perfectly to mention Bluff titler,paint shop pro animator,kool moves,for flash there are many apps available out there.

If you post step by step of your complete animation workshop in tutorials, it would be better to know other and i think it would be helpfull to other.

I also want to mention something here about the tutorials,no update has been done in tutorials,plz post your creative works.........new techniques in tutorials to learn more and also i want to be a creative artist and do the works like these, if you can do the same knid of works plz post em here.

http://www.hypnoteis.nl/

Once again i thank you for posting your work here ;) .
 
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