How to Make a Star Wars Lightsaber in Photoshop

In today's article we'll have a look at how one can create awesome effects in Photoshop and add a lightsaber (like the one in Star Wars) to their photo. This isn't our own tutorial, but rather a collection of awesome articles and YouTube videos that have already explained this in great detail (no need to reinvent the wheel)! Oh, and if you are by any chance a fan of this franchise, we have an awesome Star Wars 7 blog set up where you can follow news, leaks and rumors about the upcoming movie!

YouTube Videos on How to Make a Lightsaber Effect in PhotoShop

First off, I recommend the excelent video from Howard Pinsky who runs a great series on YouTube called #MinutePhotoshop that provides excelent and relevant advice on how to use Photoshop to create awesome visual effects. Here's his quick video tutorial:


Now if you need something more in-depth then I'd recommend having a look at this video from howtechgraphics which is really good and informative. It runs for a bit more than 3 minuets and provides very clear instructions. Granted, the voice is rather anoying and a bit "robotic" - but they are providing high quality, FREE content so there is really no room for complaints.


But, let's say you are working in another Adobe software - such as Premier Pro for editing video. How can you create a lightsaber effect like the ones seen in Star Wars? Well, it turns out that it's simple and the main concept is very similar to the one use in Photoshop and blur is obviously the word of the day. This tutorial should be enough to get you started:

Articles on How to Make Star Wars Lightsabers in Photoshop

If videos aren't really your thing, then perhaps an article is something that you need. There literally hundreds of them online because this topic is so popular. So, here are some that we'd like to recommend because they provide high quality advice and they are easy to follow along:

• Instructable has a sweet and short article on the topic.
• Practical Photoshop Mag also has a very good tutorial that is based on the pen tool + blur combo - a classic when it comes to creating this sort of effect.
•  Even the popular Star Wars fansite "The Force" has a really good tutorial on this subject that goes in-depth to talk about lightsabers in general!