Realistic Lightsabers

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You know those plastic lightsabers? Not the FX, the crappy ones. Well i'm trying to make them look like the real thing with Photoshop. I'm using my own technique atm, I don't think it looks bad but I could use some help seeing as i'm kinda new to the program.

The original:



(r-l) Darth Maul (without mask), Mace Windu, Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious, Pre-Vader Anakin, Yoda, Luke Skywalker, Count Dooku/Darth Tyrannus.

Here's what i've done so far (left two lightsabers undone for comparative/lazy purposes):



Screwed up Windu's a bit at the end, but I think the others came out well.

What i'm doing is converting the beams to solid colour, putting a white line of increasing pixel width down the middle and then blurring them together.

What i'd like to do is have the colour diffuse out of the beam like this:



As you can see the beam is a lot thinner and the white part is as thick as the handle. Well due to the thick handles (storing batteries) i'm fine with the white parts, but i'd like to make the colour diffuse out of what it is now. If someone could help me out i'd really appreciate it, thanks.
 
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well it sure looks better than tehh normal xD but... they are waaayy tooo small tiny xD
just make 'em longer and some fixing to it :p then it pwnz! ^^
 
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just make a white line, use transform to position it on top of the....crappy toy sabers, then go to LAYER > LAYER STYLE > OUTER GLOW, turn the yellow color into the color of your saber and you have a light saber maybe use a guassian blur to make it look more blurry the glow...whatever, but now it looks more like you just put a border around the white part and doesnt have a real blur around it
 
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the way i make beams is.

make a new layer, take a big soft brush, white, make a line, gaus blur it 5-10 px,
new layer, take a smaller brush than before white, one that will fit inside it easily, gaus blur 2-3
make a new layer if you wish, take a small brush, white, in the middle, til you have something resembling a beam.

use a color balance layer. then you can cut and paste ur beams.

and that picture scares me.
 
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Hamppu, the reason the beams look so short is because they're being held at an angle towards the camera, if you look at the Luke saber that's the length it's supposed to be :D

Sicron, I blurred the white into the red, not the red outwards. Can't believe I didn't think of that :]

and that picture scares me.
Haha, everyone says that. I'm not in the pic, but my brothers' Anakin. These images are mega-reduced in size and quality seeing as they were taken on a 3mp digital camera, they look pretty good at full size, gonna try and get a poster-size print.

Still, I hear 'gaussian blur' so i'll try that out, thanks for your help, i'll update it after i've tryed the effects out. Still new to the program.
 
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Ravendust said:
You know those plastic lightsabers? Not the FX, the crappy ones. Well i'm trying to make them look like the real thing with Photoshop. I'm using my own technique atm, I don't think it looks bad but I could use some help seeing as i'm kinda new to the program.

The original:



(r-l) Darth Maul (without mask), Mace Windu, Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious, Pre-Vader Anakin, Yoda, Luke Skywalker, Count Dooku/Darth Tyrannus.

Here's what i've done so far (left two lightsabers undone for comparative/lazy purposes):



Screwed up Windu's a bit at the end, but I think the others came out well.

What i'm doing is converting the beams to solid colour, putting a white line of increasing pixel width down the middle and then blurring them together.

What i'd like to do is have the colour diffuse out of the beam like this:



As you can see the beam is a lot thinner and the white part is as thick as the handle. Well due to the thick handles (storing batteries) i'm fine with the white parts, but i'd like to make the colour diffuse out of what it is now. If someone could help me out i'd really appreciate it, thanks.
so you're the one with the green face-paint of course... right?
 
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He just doesnt want to associated with a bunch of kids dressed up as star wars characters.

If you want a good effect, try sheathing the sabers (the plastic ones) and making them completely in photoshop. That way you can control the beam width and add the glow aura so it actually looks transparent.

Find a way to superimpose Samuel L. Jackson into the picture too. And replace the car with a speeder of some kind. Couple jawas couldnt hurt either...
 

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Light Saber's are really easy,



I just use a thick pencil of the wanted colour, use the eh linear free form marque thingy to delete the hard edge's and add AA, select an area around the saber for the glow, feather around 7 or 9 depending on the glow, fill in using paint and the colour, select another small area along the saber for the 'inner' glow and.. I forget the rest.. -_-
-Edit-
Hmm just remembered the inside of it should be white... huh.. anyways, don't limit you're self to the actual toy size's, it should be kind of like a pole , Slightly bigger at the handle end.
 
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best use an outer glow layer, comes out decent.
i hate those sabers though...they are thick as hell =/ fugly...lol
 
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The white line should be a bit thiner

[Off topic-Zeq2 is still alive? Great!]
 
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Shadershi said:
The white line should be a bit thiner

[Off topic-Zeq2 is still alive? Great!]
it's thick according to the original pic =p

and yeah, zeq2 is alive, =D it'll be even better if you wont rip again :smile: lol
 
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OMG! I'm really SORRY for that thing, OK?

EDIT:
Is that lightsaber broken?
 
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Yeah Count Dooku's has a curved handle.

Fatal CobraX said:
Hmm just remembered the inside of it should be white... huh.. anyways, don't limit you're self to the actual toy size's, it should be kind of like a pole , Slightly bigger at the handle end.
I tried to get rid of the 'cone' shape of the beams by putting a layer over the beams with a thick straight white line on it, and then outer glow which worked pretty well to an extent.

I don't think scale is too much of an issue, so if the beams are made bigger and it consequently makes the wielder look smaller it won't matter. They'll just look like 'younglings'.

SV - That's exactly the effect i'm going for (without the goatee :p) Mine didn't come out as well as that but i'm learning along the way. When the beams are fixed to be cylinders and not cones that effect should make it look perfect. After that i'll play around with gaussian blur.

Thanks everyone :D
 
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looks better already, as said, the white parts still look a bit too thick, and this is probably because you want to cover the toy sabers....so if you want to fix that....i think you want to find a photo retouch whatever tutorial, that teaches you how to change these kind of things
 

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RavenHooR said:
Yeah Count Dooku's has a curved handle.

I tried to get rid of the 'cone' shape of the beams by putting a layer over the beams with a thick straight white line on it, and then outer glow which worked pretty well to an extent.

I don't think scale is too much of an issue, so if the beams are made bigger and it consequently makes the wielder look smaller it won't matter. They'll just look like 'younglings'.

SV - That's exactly the effect i'm going for (without the goatee :p) Mine didn't come out as well as that but i'm learning along the way. When the beams are fixed to be cylinders and not beams that effect should make it look perfect. After that i'll play around with gaussian blur.

Thanks everyone :D
Why the hell is Viva's name on it with my qoute? =\
 
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*saves thread from death*

Ok I tried a few different things and it still didn't work exactly how I wanted but I think it looks better now than it did.

Ignore the one on the far left, i'm going to redo it.

 
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Looks nice! Though I think that all of them(Exept for Yoda's and Luke's) should be a bit longer. But this is SOOOOOOOOOO much better than your first pic :laff:
 
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The light blue light lightsaber is the only one that looks realistic.

And make Mace Windu's lightsaber a little bit lighter, other then that, pretty good job just use the same technuiqe you use on the light blue lightsaber :x
 

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