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Drawing Star Wars Lightsaber (Exclusive Tutorial)
Level: Beginner Software:
Photoshop
Not too long ago the third and final episode of the new Star Wars saga created by world-renowned director George Lucas, "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith," premiered. The most impressive and effective scenes, for me, were the duels fought with lightsabers. Bringing Hollywood to our everyday reality, I decided to write a tutorial that describes the process of drawing and adding Star Wars style lightsabers to personal photos.
1. Open Photoshop and import a photo to which you will add a lightsaber. I used this photo. As a foundation for the lightsaber any flashlight, large radiotelephone, or cylindrical object will work.
2. Using the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) create a rectangle in any part of the image. The width should be two times smaller than the thickness of your lightsaber base. The length is up to you. Optimally - it should be half the height of a grown man. I used 30x1000.
3. Now you need to slightly narrow the tip of your lightsaber and rotate the selection to adjust it to lightsaber base.
Go to Select>Transform Selection. Holding Control move the upper right and lower right corner of your foundation selection closer to one another by 20%. Press enter.
Now select Elliptical Marquee Tool and holding Shift add a circle to the end of the image.
Go again to Select>Transform Selection. Use Rotate to adjust selection to lightsaber base. Then move selection to fit it to lightsaber base.
4. Now you need to add light. Create a new layer (Ctrl+Shift+N). Fill it with white color. Deselect (Ctrl+D). Use Blur>Gaussian Blur with a radius of about 10px. Now go to Layer>Layer Style>Outer Glow and use the following settings:
You may use any color for your lightsaber (red as Darth Maul has, green as Yoda has, blue as Obi-Wan has, or your personal color as Minister George ;)
5. Duplicate this layer (Ctrl+J)
6. Create a new layer (Ctrl+Shift+N). Load selection from previous layer (Ctrl+Click) on it. Fill selection again with white. Deselect. Use Blur>Gaussian Blur with radius of about 5px. Now go to Layer>Layer Style>Outer Glow and use the following settings:
7. (optional) Duplicate this layer (Ctrl+J) one or few times to add more glow.
That's all - now you will have something like this:
Download .PSD here.
TIP: You can make an action script in Photohshop to make lots of lightsabers by clicking one button:
After step3 go to Window>Actions. Press the New Action button and then OK. Proceed with all remaining steps and press Stop Recording.
That's it - now, when you open new photo, all you have is to do is to make a selection of further lightsaber and play your action.
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kameleon November 11, 2008 says:This is very cool tutorial. It is one of the best I could have seen.
mikfoz April 20, 2006 says:I used the tutorial but slightly twiddled settings. With GMod I managed to create this as a test image.
As you can see, it works just fine. FallenKnight July 11, 2005 says:I think i found the problem with it its the part where its supposed to Fill, its set to fill a certain area, for example its set to fill from cm 45452 to cm 34343 but instead cm1100 is marked, is there anyway to fix this?
FallenKnight July 11, 2005 says:alright, i can now get awesome results doing it manually, the blur name is wrong tough, its Gaussian blur not radial? anyway i still cannot get the action script to work this is its lineup: add to selection Transform Selection Make layer Fill Set selection Gaussian Blur Set layer styles of current layer Layer Via copy Make layer Set selection Fill Gaussian Blur Set layer styles of current layer Layer via copy layer via copy layer via copy the error i get is : cannot complete the action gaussian blur because the selected area is empty.
Reiven July 11, 2005 says:| : |
| After step 3 i start recording, when im done i finnish, yet when i create a new file or try on the current one make a selection and run the script it gives me an error saying selection is empty, i tried recording from the begining but well...it opens the same file and does the same thing Sad and if you delete the open part it gives the message again. |
| : |
| i dont understand the first transform part where you're supposed to do something with 20%? |
| : |
| And another thing, i was using the george.jpg to test on thing is i cant seem to recreate a lightsaber on another picture Sad instead of glowing near the white it makes the whole picture red(the colour i was using.) |
FallenKnight July 09, 2005 says:Great tutorial! awesome results im wondering tough, is there anyway i can get your action script? whatever i do i keep getting an error selection is empty thing. After step 3 i start recording, when im done i finnish, yet when i create a new file or try on the current one make a selection and run the script it gives me an error saying selection is empty, i tried recording from the begining but well...it opens the same file and does the same thing
and if you delete the open part it gives the message again.
And another thing, i was using the george.jpg to test on thing is i cant seem to recreate a lightsaber on another picture instead of glowing near the white it makes the whole picture red(the colour i was using.)
alas one more thing, i dont understand the first transform part where you're supposed to do something with 20%?