[r0ckstarr]

My girlfriend wants to take a photo and process it in Lightroom to look like it was glow in the dark. I said that it's not possible unless you shoot a glow in the dark photo and enhance it in LR. Agree or disagree?

[r0ckstarr]

What do you mean by glow in the dark. PS (not LR) has a Glowing edges filter that gives a neon-like look:

She wants to take a normal photo shot in daylight, and make it look like this.

https://www.google.com/search?q=glow+in+the+dark+photography&espv=2&biw=1920...rWA3UQ_AUIBygC

I've tried to explain that it's not possible in LR, but she doesn't quite get it and had to hear it from someone else.

[normhead]

Looks like a little black light art. I used to have black light when I was in my teens and my whole basement wall was covered in black burlap and painted with those paints. It was really popular as part of our "haunted house" on halloween. So, not only do you need darkness, you need a blacklight and the paints.

[MikeD]

My girlfriend wants to take a photo and process it in Lightroom to look like it was glow in the dark. I said that it's not possible unless you shoot a glow in the dark photo and enhance it in LR. Agree or disagree?

You can do something like this with Topaz Glow no problem but I don't think you can with LR

---------- Post added 12-14-2015 at 10:25 PM ----------

Looks like a little black light art. I used to have black light when I was in my teams and my whole basement wall was covered in black burlap and painted with those pants. It was really popular as part of our "haunted house" on halloween. So, not only do you need darkness, you need a blacklight and the paints.

He's 100% right about this.

[reeftool]

I would say you're probably right. You would want to expose your shot so the background is very dark and kind of overexpose whatever you want highlighted with flash. From there you can play with the sliders, white balance, etc. Lightroom only gives you so much room to adjust. You can do darn near anything with Photoshop and there are probably plug-ins to LR that would accomplish the effect. Without knowing exactly what she wants to do, it's hard to guess how you would go about processing the shot. One old trick for glowing effects I heard about involved rubbing Vaseline on a cheap UV or skylight filter but I have never done any of that.

---------- Post added 12-14-15 at 09:36 PM ----------

WHile I was typing, I saw your post of the effects she wants to do. Photoshop and/or plug-ins for that stuff.

[promacjoe]

I have Light room 4.4, but since it doesn't work properly with the Pentax raw images I don't use it. So I cannot attest to whether it is possible or not using that software, but I have seen some pretty amazing graphics come out of computers that are far less advanced and capable than what we have now. If I remember correctly, most of the computer-animated graphics for Deep Space 9 was done on a Amiga computer. A good well-trained Computer graphic artist, could probably teach us all a trick or two. I know you can do some pretty amazing things with an old program like paint shop Pro 9, which I have and still use from time to time.

I believe it might be possible, but it would take a very well trained Computer graphic artist, to do it. how long it would take would be another question.

[Kerrowdown]

Help me settle a dispute between me and my gf

Really?... are sure you want to let us lot in between you two.

It's possibly achievable with Photoshop where can use multiple layers, colour brush painting and luminosity sliders etc. So I think your correct in what you say, that using Lightroom only it would be very difficult.

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Last edited by Kerrowdown; 12-15-2015 at 02:36 AM.

[Bromberger]

not possible in LR.
possible in PS, but will be much more work than simply shooting it in uv light in the first place

[mohb]

If you make the tone curve into point curve in LR you can get some 'odd' results that look something like glow in dark, never tried altering luminosity at the same time though.

[BrianR]

If you really cared, you would make Lightroom do it for her. You might be able to do what she wants in LR, but it would be laborious. Convert to black and white with some split toning to get the purple/blue. Then use the next 3 months of your life and the adjustment brush with various colours to paint your way to glory. Getting a realistic glow in LR will likely be much harder than just getting the paint and UV light in the first place, and definitely not the kind of pixel pushing LR is built for. One of the filters in PS (Elements also has the "Glowing Edges" filter) or an appropriate plugin is probably a better option if paint+UV isn't feasible.

[normhead]

Why not use the brushes etc in photoshop to just paint the image from scratch? You can import a few things, like your GF and the put then clone the day glow effects from other images.If Tess ever wanted this I'd tell here, "Here's where you buy photoshop, her's where you buy a few tutorials, here's a few place on the web you can find some files to play with, I'll take you picture, have at her.

Just integrating a few elements to an existing photo can be hours of work. I;m never even tried to pu a realistic looking dayglo skin on someone. This is a skill. If she thinks learning the skill is important, she should do it. There's the whole movie thing with creating whole environments 3D worlds and various skins applied to stick figures etc. I can be done. But it's way beyond the realm of photography. That's some serious graphic arts stuff.

People take 2 and 3 year courses in how to do this stuff.

So, tell your girlfriend you" get right on it," and never mention it again. Further updates can be "ya, I'm still working on it. By the way, I'm so busy with it I haven't had time to wash my truck. Could you just do that while I work."

[januko]

Try reverse color effect and start editing from there.

[WPRESTO]

I doubt you can exactly reproduce such effects PP, however, the "GLOWING EDGE" filter in PS will give you something equally radical.

Did a quick-as-I-could taking an image of my daughter during a dance recital (scan from negative) and applied the "glowing edge" filter. Further tweaking with individual color channels could alter the outcome substantially. Also, applying other extreme filters, such as posterization, atop the glowing edge image, or applying these filters in the opposite sequence, would produce very different distortions.

[wolfworx]

I would not be so quick to write off Lightroom, this is a quick 5 minute effort...

Original


Tweak ...


I realise it's not perfect, but with some time and effort ...

[Dipsoid]

Yes, this could be done with lots of tedious work with the adjustment brush. You're better off using layers and layer masks in Photoshop or getting it in camera.