High Key Glow Effect In Photoshop
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Step 3: Change The Blend Mode Of "Layer 1" To Screen
You should now be seeing the entire image once again in the document window. Make sure "Layer 1" is selected in the Layers panel. The currently selected layer is always highlighted in blue, so if "Layer 1" is not highlighted in blue, click on it in the Layers panel to select it. We're going to make the highlights appear much brighter in the image, and we'll do that by changing the layer's blend mode. You'll find the blend mode options at the top of the Layers panel. By default, layers are set to the Normal blend mode, which basically means "boring". Click on the word "Normal", then select Screen from the list of blend modes that appears:
The Screen blend mode is one of a group of blend modes in Photoshop that lighten the image, and we can see in the document window that the highlight areas now appear much brighter, although they also appear rather harsh and blotchy at the moment, but we'll fix that in the next step:
Step 4: Apply The Gaussian Blur Filter
To create the glow effect, we need to soften the highlights, and we'll do that by applying a small amount of blurring to them. Go up to the Filter menu in the Menu Bar, choose Blur, and then choose Gaussian Blur:
This brings up Photoshop's Gaussian Blur dialog box. Adjust the amount of blurring that's applied to the highlights by clicking and dragging the Radius slider at the bottom of the dialog box. Drag the slider towards the right to apply more blurring, or towards the left to reduce the blur amount. You'll want to keep an eye on your image in the document window as you drag the slider since the amount you choose will depend both on your own personal taste and on the size of your image, but keep the amount fairly low, otherwise you'll wash out the highlights completely. I'm going to set my Radius value to around 8 pixels:
Click OK when you're done to exit out of the dialog box, at which point Photoshop applies the blurring to the layer. The highlights now appear much softer:
