How to Make Neon Text in Photoshop – Quick and Easy

 Here is a simple and easy-to-follow tutorial showing how to create neon text in Photoshop. I’ll show you my settings and how to apply text effects to text layers to easily make neon text in Photoshop

How to Make Neon Text in Photoshop

In this video, I’m going to show you how to create the neon text effect in Photoshop. I’m going to show you how to use layer styles to create a neon sign text effect just like this. And then I’m going to show you how to change the color of the neon sign by using an adjustment layer.

How to Add Text for Your Neon Effect

So we’re going to start off by choosing our font look over here in the toolbar and get my text tool, click on T and I’m going to use Proxima Nova regular. I’m going to link some other fonts that I found that you may be interested in using, but you can use your own font.

I think something that is a little wide to begin with is good to start with. So I’m just going to click in all caps Las Vegas, click the check mark to commit it. I say Command T and hold my shift in option key, and it’s going to scale this out.

And let’s make it about this big . I’m going to click the check mark to commit it. So usually you see a neon sign on a dark wall if you want this background I’ll also link to it in the description.

If I want to center this, I will say CMD+ A and come up here and select my Move tool, and I can use any of these tools to center my text and say CMD+D. Now what we’re going to use are the styles.

Or if you double click on this layer that says Las Vegas, here is the layer style dialog and say Cancel for now and make this as easy as possible, which is the goal.

How to use Legacy Style as a Starting Point.

We’re going to use some styles that are in Photoshop. If you don’t see styles over here, in one of the panels you come up here to window. Click on that and come down here to styles and you have all these different styles here, one we’re going to use, it’s actually in legacy styles and more, and if you don’t see that you can come over here to

this flyout menu and click on that. And you can come here to. Legacy styles and more. Click on that, I don’t need the extra one. And in legacy styles and more, twirl that down and come all the way down.

To where you see something called Web Styles. Twirl that down, and we’re going to select one of these styles just as a starting point to make this go a little bit quicker. So you have all these different styles here. Purple gel, red gel, Yellow Gel, Green Gel.

We’re going to go with purple gel and I’m going to click on that and right away, that style was applied to the Las Vegas layer right here. So this will be our starting point. If you double click on the layer with the laser styles panel here, you’re going to see all the effects that it took to make up this style. Deselect or select any of these styles or make adjustments right here to the way it looks.

How to use the Styles You Need for this Effect

So to use all the styles in this layer style dialog. Come over here, to where it says. Blending options now for our purposes. We don’t need to use all of these styles that are here now. We’re not going to use bevel and boss we’re not going to use contour inner, shadow, satin, color overlay or drop shadow. This is just a starting point.

And we’re going to make this a lot simpler. So the first one we’re going to select is inner glow. You want to set the blend mode here to Hard Light. The opacity right here. You want to make it 40 in size.

You want to make this twelve. And this color square right here. Sets to Glow Color. And double click on that. With this color picker up, you want to come down here and you want to type in 7200ff and say, OK, that’s going to be our glow color.

So now we’re going to come to the outer glow and select that. And this blend mode, we are going to set to Linear Dodge and the opacity and change this to 80 and down in a section where says elements.

We’re going to change the size to 70. And for outter glow, we’re going to change the color slightly. Click on the color box. And with a color picker up. Type in 9600ff and say, OK, and we’re still on outer glow.

Click on this contour picture right here in the middle of this line. We’re going to put a point click on the graph right there in the middle. I’m going to say at this point, I’m going to set the input two, 48 and the output to 62.

And this just gives us a nice curve and makes the neon light a little more brighter and we say OK and close the layer style. So now with the text layer selected, I’m going to say CMD or Control +J.

And duplicate it. This bottom layer here is the copy, so. If it made another layer called Las Vegas copy, you want to put it below the first text layer, so if you double click on the duplicated layer, it brings up the layer style dialog.

And for this one, we’re not going to need inner glow, so you can untick that. But what we need to add is a stroke. So I’ve come down here and where its effects like that, and you can select stroke with stroke selected, we want to make sure that your size is at one pixel and your position is inside

opacity 100. And this color is completely black. So what this is going to do is it’s going to make the edges soft again because sometimes it can look a little bit pixelated. This just helps, and you can leave the blend mode to a normal.

Next, we need to highlight the outer glow. We’re going to leave the blend mode to the linear dodge. Down here in the elements. We’re going to set the size to its maximum of 250, and we’re going to come down here to contour again and adjust this line.

And at a point right about here, and we’re going to make this input eleven, and the output 28. Click on the middle point and we’re going to make the input 34, the output 65, and then we’re going to make another point about here on this graph, and we’re going to make this input.

76 and output 94. And this gives us a nice curve. I’m going to say, OK, and let’s say, OK, here again, If you’re getting value out of this so far, hit that like button and consider subscribing.

How to Add Extra Glow to Your Neon Effect

Now, the last touch we’re going to do is we’re going to add a new layer, come down here to the create new layer icon, and I want this layer below everything. So it’s below the two text layers. I’m going to close this group, so you can see better. So there are 2 layers and a new blank layer below all of them and in between the background. I’m going to hit ‘B” for the brush tool.

And I had the brush hardness set to 0% in the size of the brush. It’s going to be about 390 pixels and in the color swatch over here, I want the color to be 7200ff. That’s the color I’m going to paint with.

And we’re going to give this an extra glow. So with the new layer that we created, I’m just going to paint. Over this like, so just the outline and paint over it. Something like this, and then we’re going to change the blend mode of that layer we just painted on.

Down here to soft light. So we’ve added a little bit more glow there. Now a quick way to change color and if you really want to change it. And change it slightly if you come down here to your layers panel and add a hue and saturation adjustment layer and then when you could do is you can change the

hue just to see if there’s something else that you like. But that’s what we first came up with. And you can see all the effects that you added. Over here, you drop this down. You can see that they’re all here on both of them.

How to Add Additional Words for Neon Effect

And if you wanted to add another word. And he wanted to look the same. You would add your text and size it to the way you wanted, and you would have to duplicate it and copy the same effects from the layers you already created, like, for instance.

This was the top layer if I held alt/Option and drag it up to this top layer. You come down here to the copy, hold alt/option and drag it to the bottom layer here. That’s the way you that you would add another word and copy the same effects to that word.

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See my previous blog ➡️ Smooth Zoom in Premiere Pro – Create Quick and Easy Transitions

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