Neon tube lighting is everywhere....from the corner drugstore to the boardwalk at the ocean. And it's so easy to create with Paint Shop Pro! I use PSP 4.12, so I don't know if this will work with PSP 5.0 or not....

The first step is to open a new file with 16.4 million colors, a black background, and a foreground color of your choice...whatever color your neon sign is supposed to be, make that your foreground color. Next, pick a font...any font.... we'll make the font tubular in a minute. When you create your text, be sure anti aliasing is on in the text editor window.

After you create your text (my sample font is called Astute), de-select it.

The next step is to "tubularize" the letters. This is very simple to do, but again, the text must be de-selected for this step. Click on IMAGE : EDGE FILTERS : FIND EDGES and voila! you have tubular lettering.

Now we start to "glow". The first step in the glowing is to "fuzzy up" the text by using IMAGE : NORMAL FILTERS : SOFTEN one time. AND ONLY one time! You'll wind up with something that looks like this:

Next, apply COLORS : ADJUST : BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST. For the example below, I set BRIGHTNESS at 26 and CONTRAST at 52. Play with the BRIGHTNESS setting until the text "glows" to your liking, then adjust CONTRAST until the background is black again.

The final "glow" is achieved by adding IMAGE : SPECIAL EFFECTS: ADD DROP SHADOW... using the same color as your text. REMEMBER that to use DROP SHADOW the text must be highlighted. Using the Magic Wand tool, highlight all the letters (to highlight multiple objects, highlight the first object, then hold down SHIFT while you click on the remaining objects).

For the example, I set COLOR = FOREGROUND COLOR, OPACITY = 150, and BLUR = 26. Then I "walked" around the text by using the following FOUR offset combinations: -4 : 4, 4 : -4, -4 : -4, and 4 : 4;

The last creative step is to apply IMAGE : NORMAL FILTERS : SHARPEN one time (or more...it's up to you). The result is the finished image to the left.

NOTE: Save the final image as a GIF; saving as a JPG does very strange things to it...

HEY! Your neon stylings are NOT restricted to text...uh-uh! Thanks to the FIND EDGES filter you can use ANY dingbat, wingbat, gizmo, gadget or doodle as a subject...see?

becomes

Pretty cool, huh? I hope this little tutorial helps you...I know I enjoyed discovering this trick and writing it up!

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