"Electrical Glow"

cambler

I have an image of a model standing in front of a 100 year-old electrical panel (taken at an abandoned penitentiary). I'd like to photoshop in some sparks and an eerie blue electrical glow - think the blue glow you get from motion picture lens flares, for example.

The sparks I can do - I have source material of sparks from a fetish shoot I did where a guy was using a fast-rotation sander on a metal spike to generate a huge spark flow.

But the glow eludes me. It has to be subtle, but obvious.

Anyone have any advice?

cletus

cambler wrote:

I have an image of a model standing in front of a 100 year-old electrical panel (taken at an abandoned penitentiary). I'd like to photoshop in some sparks and an eerie blue electrical glow - think the blue glow you get from motion picture lens flares, for example.

The sparks I can do - I have source material of sparks from a fetish shoot I did where a guy was using a fast-rotation sander on a metal spike to generate a huge spark flow.

But the glow eludes me. It has to be subtle, but obvious.

Anyone have any advice?

Not quite sure on the exact effect you want. What is the source of the blue glow? It is a halo around the panel or the model? Does the glow come from the sparks? Are you looking for kind of a soft glow coming from the panel as a whole (kind of a radioactive glow effect)?

Just about any glow effect is going to need some masking and/or multiple layers to control what the glow falls on. Next I would say that the key to an effective glow is going to be keeping the edges of the effect very, very soft.

A glow from the sparks would be pretty simple. Since the sparks are more than likely on their own layer, you could use an outer glow layer style. Just make it big with a fairly low opacity.

A halo effect around either the model or panel could be done the same way. Select the object that the halo goes around, move it to it's own layer and add a layer style. In this case you would probably want to add a bit of inner glow in addition to the outer glow.

Another thing that comes to mind is depending on how bright the glow is, it is going to illuminate objects around it. For the effect to really work you'll have to take that into account.

It would probably help if you could let us take a look at the "pre-glow" version.

cambler

Yeah, more of the "radioactive glow" effect. Good idea on the shot - here's the unedited raw image. I'm going to darken it a little to make the sparks and glow stand out (remember, I'm thinking electric-blue for the glow).

cletus

cambler wrote:

Yeah, more of the "radioactive glow" effect. Good idea on the shot - here's the unedited raw image. I'm going to darken it a little to make the sparks and glow stand out (remember, I'm thinking electric-blue for the glow).

Ok, now I think I see what you're looking for. A glow that kind of spills out of the open panel front.

The first approach I would take would be to create a new layer for the glow and try painting it in with a big soft brush. I'd then go back and mask off the edges of the glow so that near side of the panel blocks it off - making it look like the glow is behind the panel side. With the glow on its own layer you could adjust the opacity and blending mode to tweak the effect.

If the painted look doesn't work. I'd next try making a trapezoid shaped selection to form the basic shape for the glow. Feather the selection and then fill it with the color of the glow. You might even want to use the gradient tool to create the glow. With the gradient tool I'd start with the glow color I wanted on the left (in the area of the panel) and then have a horizontal fade to a less saturated version of the same color on the right (away from the panel). Again, I'd mask the glow so it looked like it was coming from inside the panel and then I'd tweak the opacity and blending to improve the look.

If I get some time I'll try to play around with it!

Khaos

Is this some kind of new electric-leather fetish that I haven't heard of yet?

cambler wrote:

Yeah, more of the "radioactive glow" effect. Good idea on the shot - here's the unedited raw image. I'm going to darken it a little to make the sparks and glow stand out (remember, I'm thinking electric-blue for the glow).

cambler

Khaos wrote:

Is this some kind of new electric-leather fetish that I haven't heard of yet?

But of course! There's better, but I'm apparently not allowed to post it here.

cletus

Took a few minutes to play around with this. These are very crude, but should be enough to decide if this is the look you want. Here's what I did:

• Created a new layer above the background layer
• Made a trapezoid shaped selection to form the basic shape of the glow.
• Filled the selection using the gradient tool. Started at 100% opacity, faded to 0% opacity. Color also became less saturated across the gradient.
• Added a layer mask. Using soft edged brushes I went back and softened up the outside of the glow, made sure the glow didn't show up on the side of the panel, and removed the glow from the model's left arm.
• Changed the layer blending mode to "Linear Dodge":

I also tried setting the layer blending mode to "Screen":

cambler

That's very close to what I have in mind, though I'm going to go for a more subdued darker blue, with some flare streaks and sparks. But yeah, you have the general idea.

I'll play with the layering workflow you described.

Thanks!

PS: the whole set of this model is now up at http://www.amblerphoto.com in the Attitudes section if you're curious about the shoot and location.