How to Make Realistic Clear Christmas Lights in Photoshop

Clear Christmas lights never fail to brighten the festive Yultide season, whether to the traditional Christmas tree or around the House facade.

You may not have the patience to adorn the entire house facade with miles of Christmas lights around the holidays. But you can do a virtual exterior lighting decoration with clear Christmas lights around the house edges, shrubs and trees using Photoshop. The finished image file can appear in your online greeting card or your Facebook this Christmas.

Things You'll Need

• Adobe Photoshop 7 or later
• Digital shot of the house facade at night

Instructions

Putting Lights Around the House Structure

1. Take a digital photo of the house facade at night or just after dusk. Don't put too much perspective in the shot.. You will want to paint a pearly string of tiny clear Christmas lights as they run along edges of the roof line, windows, doors and posts of your house exterior shot. Upload and open it in Adobe Photoshop version 7 or higher.

2. Create a layer and select the "Brush" tool. Go to the "Brushes" tab or "Brush" palette icon to open the brush settings. Depending on the image size, adjust the brush size to approximate the relative size of a each Christmas light against the house.

3. Choose a soft edge brush from the "Brush Presets." You want to approximate the lights that a camera typically captures and there's nothing definite in the edges of a lighted Christmas light taken from a distance. On the same Brush palette box, go to "Brush Tip Shape" and adjust the shape of the brush to make it more oval to better represent the shape of these lights.

4. At the bottom of the Brush Tip Shape bow is "Spacing." Adjust the slider so you get the proper spacing between the brush tips to approximate how the real lights are spaced apart when its cable runs straight.

5. Check "Shape Dynamics" in the same box and slide the "Angle Jitter" to around 10 percent or more. This creates random angling of the oval lights to reflect the real thing. Go to "Control" under the Angle Jitter and select "Initial Direction" so that the angles are maintained whichever direction your brush painting goes.

6. Select "White" as your palette color and start painting Christmas lights on the edges of the house. This is a freehand step, but you can simply click on a starting point and "Shift"+"Click" for the end point to make it easier and more precise.

7. Add a "Layer Style" to the current layer and click on "Outer Glow" to give the lights a more authentic look. Under the Elements section, move the "Spread' slider to give more glow to the lights.

Scattering Clear Christmas Lights Onto Shrubs and Trees

1. Create another layer for the house greenery and go to the Brushes tab again. This time, in addition to your earlier settings, check "Scattering" and slide the Scatter to increase the vertical spread of the brush strokes. Increase the Count as well to 2 or more.

2. Paint the shrubs and trees to create a random placement of the lights. Duplicate the Layer style to let the current layer inherit the same outer glow effects.

Tips & Warnings

• For uploading to the Web, a 400x320 pixel -ize image or lower is just fine. But, working on a large image on Photoshop is easier and you can just resize it after.

References

• Planet Photoshop: Chirstmas Lights