Baby Darth Vader - Photoshop Fun!

[Forkie]

I was just playing the other day when I had my light tent out and thought I'd share the fun

Here's the original shot of Baby Vader and my edit. I was practicing "fake" lighting really. I knew I wanted him on a black background with a lit light sabre, but don't have any gels for my lights, so had a go at faking a lit light sabre and the reflective light from it. I just thought it might be fun to share it here for anyone interested in creating effects in PS.



For those interested in how this was done:

(After my normal contrast and colour corrections)

1. I selected the light sabre and created a new "Layer via copy".
2. In the new layer created both an outer and inner glow effect (click "fx" under the layers)- adjusting it to what I though looked ok.
3. Created a new layer and selected the gradient tool and set it to "foreground to transparent" and about 75% opacity
4. Dragged the gradient to about 3/4 of the way across the image from right to left
5. Selected the "Overlay" blending mode
6. Masked out any stray redness from where I didn't need it.
7. Repeated steps 3 - 6 with black instead of red to darken the bottom edges of the photo

Done!

Enjoy!