Highlight glow/bleed effect
This filter effect uses layers to lighten and add a slight glow to the picture. The image to the left shows what the picture looks like without glow. The picture to the right
shows it with glow. Notice how the green background bleeds into the hair. Here are the steps
involved in creating this color bleed/glow effect:
1. Open your picture and make a layer copy of the whole picture (menu item Layer/Duplicate layer). It will be named Background copy if you don't name it.
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2. Adjust the RGB curves of the Background copy layer (menu item Image/Adjust/Curves or Ctrl+M).
This is a very important step because it will determine where and how strong the glow will be. I have taken a screenshot of the curves window which shows how I tweaked my curves to achieve the picture below. I made the highlights of the picture (the green areas) more powerful and the darker midtone areas less dominant (the red areas).
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3. Next I added a Gaussian Blur filter to the layer copy (menu item Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur). The radius of the blur depends on how much bleed you want the glow to have. On a normal sized picture it ranges between 5 and 20 pixels.
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4. Lastly I changed the blend mode of the Background copy layer to screen. This mode will only lighten the layers below it which causing the bleed effect.
A larger version of the picture can be found on the pictures page entitled Green Girl.
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