Star Wars Photoshop Light Saber Tutorial
Have you ever wanted a "real" light saber? You can buy plasma swords and other toys that simluate the appearance of a lightsaber to a greater or lesser degree, but what if you want to create a realistic lightsaber effect in a photo? The energy blade effect that you see in the films was achieved
through the special effects artistry of ILM (Industrial Lights
and Magic), of course. These special effects are added in post production,
but during filming, the actors who portrayed the jedi and sith fighters used painted aluminum tubes. (Apparently, the actors routinely broke these tunes so often when sparring that they wrapped the tubes in cellophane to keep the pieces from flying around. For more on ILM lightsaber history, see starwars.com)
While you and I may not have the resources of ILM, with a little bit of practice and a powerful computer program like Adobe Photoshop, we can recreate the same kinds of stunning visual effects. I created this tutorial as a way to help fans recreate for themselves a tiny piece of the fantastic world of Star Wars.
What you will need for this tutorial...
- Adobe Photoshop
- a light saber replica
- one of the following…
- a digital camera
- a scanner and a regular camera
- your pictures on a Kodak photo CD
In addition, I would also recommend...
- a "stand-in" saber blade
- a jedi costume
Adobe Photoshop
This tutorial will give you the basics on how to create a glowing saber blade effect with Adobe Photoshop. The procedure is not terribly hard but requires some patience, some practice, and a powerful image editing program and the computer to run it. In this tutorial, I used Adobe Photoshop 5.5 on a PC.
Light Saber Replica
Let’s not forget your light saber replica... it's an important part of the illusion, and we can’t do without it. You can check out various tutorials on the Web (see below) if you need to build a custom light saber.
Recommendation
I would also suggest that if possible you should find a way to incorporate a long, slender tube with your saber replica that is the appropriate size and length of the blade you want. This stand-in blade will act as an excellent reference for you for two reasons. First, when you retouch the photo, you'll know where the blade should be. And second, when you are staging your shot, you'll know where the effect will be. It is always best to have a stand-in to mark the location your special effect will take place. That's why they do it at Lucasfilm.
While you’re at it, a jedi costume wouldn't be a bad idea either. That takes a bit more work, but it also adds to your drama. There are tutorials for making jedi robes on this and many other sites, and of course you can buy an outfit as well.
Last but not least, if you are editing the photos with your computer, you’ll need a way to get them on the computer in the first place. There are a few ways to import your photos on a computer. You can use a digital camera and download directly to the computer; a scanner to download pictures from a regular camera; or you can have your pictures put on a Kodak photo CD for a fee by a film developer like Kodak, Motofoto, Fotomat, Ritz Camera, etc.
So are you ready, my padawan learner? Then let us begin.
As we use different Photoshop tools, I will give you the name of the tool and the shortcut key, for example, the Eraser tool (E). All necessary steps will be bolded. Let’s start with a basic saber picture, no people involved. And going against the advice I just gave, we won’t use a stand in blade, since this will be a small simple picture.
You can practice these steps on the image I'm using here by downloading this starting image. To download, Windows users should right click the image and select Save Picture As.
Lightsaber tutorial
1. Once you have opened up the picture of your lightsaber in Photoshop, the first thing to do is create a copy of the Background image on a new layer. This way you will preserve the original image. Drag the Background layer to the New layer Icon in the layers palette. This will create a duplicate layer with the saber image.
2. Next, you will create another new layer for the saber blade. Click on the new layer icon in the Layers palette.
3. Name the new layer saber. We will create the light saber blade on a separate layer so that it is easier to manipulate without affecting the original picture.
4. Double-click the Line tool icon in the Toolbox. A dialog box with Line options will open. The column that says weight is the one you want to change to make the line thicker or thinner.
5. Make sure that the "Anti-aliased" checkbox is selected. This will ensure that your line will blend into its surroundings with soft edges, which is preferable.
6. Make the line weight 24 and press Tab to accept.
7. With the Foreground color swatch set to pure white, use the Line tool (N) to make a straight line coming out of the emitter of your saber. You can change the thickness of the line in the Line tool palette. Make sure it is centered and aligned with the hilt
It is also usually a temptation for beginners to make their sabers thicker than necessary. In general, you should try to err on the side of thinner. The blade will become thicker when you add the effects later.
8. In our picture, part of the emitter shroud is blocked by the line. We will trim the excess line away. Zoom in on the emitter shroud and use the Eraser tool (E) in brush mode to remove the excess line. Once you have erased the extra line segments, you can return to the full view by pressing CTRL 0.
9. Hold CTRL and click on the saber layer in the layers palette. This will select everything on that layer all at once, and you will get a selection marquee around the white line.
10. Choose Select > Modify > Expand. Enter a value of 8 pixels. The selection expands accordingly.
11. Choose Select > Feather, and enter a radius of 8 pixels. Click "Ok". The selection appears to change shape, becoming more circular.
12. With white as the background color in the Toolbox, press CTRL Delete to fill using the background color. Now the saber will have a white haze around it. Note that the number of pixels you'll use to create an energy haze around your saber may differ in other pictures. Experimentation is the key to finding the appropriate amount.
13. Now we will add layer effects to give our blade an inner and outer glow color. With the saber layer active, in the control menu go to Layer>Effects>Outer Glow. A layer effects dialog box appears for outer glow.
14. Enter the following parameters
for the outer glow...
Mode: Overlay;
Opacity: 62%;
Blur: 45 pixels;
Intensity: 184%.
You can choose any color you want for your lightsaber in the color picker box. I chose a purplish color made up of the RGB values R: 179, G: 54, B: 160.
15. Once you have entered these numbers,
click on the drop down level and choose Inner glow from the
menu. Enter the following parameters for the inner glow...
Mode: Multiply;
Opacity: 37%;
Blur: 16 pixels;
Intensity: 210%.
The color you choose should be similar to the blade color you chose earlier- maybe slightly lighter. I chose a color made up of the RGB values R: 197, G: 81, B: 182. You can play around with these various levels to find an optimal one for yourself.
16.
Click "OK".
Now your blade has a nice colorful glow. You might even be tempted
to think you're done. You're not, however. Or at least, that's
not where I usually stop.
In order to you want to treat the saber as a genuine light source, the colored light it gives off should affect the overall lighting in the room. I should note that in the Star Wars movies, the light saber lighting does NOT always affect the room lighting. But in our minds we know it should be illuminating, so we believe it does. If you DO make the light saber affect the room lighting, the effect is even more convincing. Why don't you take a snapshot of the saber now in the history palette (click on the new snapshot icon) so you can compare it with the result of these next few steps.
17. Click on the Background copy layer of the saber. Use the Control menu to choose Image>Adjust>Variations. Just in case you've used variations recently, click on the "original" box in the variations palette. This restores your variations to no default. Make sure your setting slider is midway between Fine and Coarse as in the screenshot below.
18. Click on the magenta option twice. Each time you click, the image becomes more magenta-ish. Click "Ok". Now the saber background is more magenta, as if the blade itself has changed the overall color cast of the room. Obviously you'll want to make the color based on whatever color you chose for your saber.
19. Click on the new layers icon in the layers palette and drag the new layer to the top of the palette. We will combine all of the work we've done so far on one layer to add a special effect to it.
20. Hold down the ALT key and choose Layers>Merge Visible (CTRL ALT SHIFT E). This will make a unified copy of all of the visible layers on the selected layer.
21. Use the Control menu and choose Filters>Render>Lens Flare. Lens flares are prepackaged effects to simulate how a bright light source can be refracted in a photographer's camera lens. For us, it's a neat trick that can make a decent image look really great.
22. Drag the focal point of the flare to the emitter area of the lightsaber. You can play around with the exact settings. I used a 50-300mm Zoom flare at 92% brightness.
This is my result.
You can now save the image for the web so you can post it on your favorite Star Wars web site. Keep in mind, you don't want to post a psd file- I recommend using the save for web feature (or at least a copy) so that you can modify or access your original later, if necessary. Save the original image as saber 1.psd. Also, you can now try hiding both the top layer and the Background copy layer to see what the image would look like without these later effects added.
In a more complex image, I recommend selecting highlights in the background and adding an extra touch of color to them to further imply a color tint in the room. I may have gone a little overboard in this image, but you can see my point, I think. It is also good if you can have your main light source coming from the same direction as the lightsaber is in so that it truly appears to light the things around it.
These are the principles I use when I make my lightsaber blade effects, and with a little bit of practice and creativity, you too can use them on your star wars images. I hope this tutorial has helped you get a feel for how to do it. Don’t be frustrated if yours didn’t turn out perfectly on the first try. It is a learning process, and with practice, this too will you master.
And may the Force be with you!
