Make Your Images Glow Beautifully: a Glow Effect Photoshop Tutorial

Photoshop Post Processing Effects

Want to look like a professional wedding photographer? Get that dreamy/magical effect around subjects or lights in your photography. Here's the news: it's nothing more than a glowing effect. Applying glow to your images will make them look special and even more interesting, but the best part is that the entire process of making your images glow in Photoshop is very simple.

But before we begin, and if you want to follow this tutorial exactly as described, please download the following image from Pixabay: Download

Step 1

Open you image in Photoshop.

Step 2

Go to Select > Color Range.

Step 3

In the Color Range window under “Select”, pick the “Highlights” option in the dropdown menu.

Step 4

Adjust the Fuzziness and Range to match your image highlights and click OK. In this case, a Fuzziness of 20% and a Range of 190 will work just fine.

Step 5

With the Selection active, press Ctrl+J on your keyboard to copy the selected area in a new layer.

Step 6

Rename this layer to “Glow”.

Step 7

With the “Glow” layer selected, go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set the Radius to around 20 px and click OK. Note: Depending on your image size, you may need to adjust this setting a bit.

Step 8

In the Layers Panel, set the Blending Mode of the “Glow” layer to “Screen”.

Step 9

Go to Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options.

Step 10

Drag the slider of the “This Layer” under the “Blend If” options to around 170/175.

Step 11

Hold the “Alt” key and drag the right slider all the way to 255.

Step 12

Still in the Blending Option Panel, drag the slider of the “Underlying Layer” to around 95/100.

Step 13

Hold the “Alt” key and drag the right slider all the way to 255. Click OK to apply.

Step 14 (optional)

If you want to make the glow effect a bit more intense, simply duplicate the “Glow” layer and adjust the opacity to you liking.