In this tutorial, I am going to teach you how to make any text and graphics look like a neon sign. You can do this with any font but outlines on graphics are all that will really work.
New File
To start, click on File then New. If you already have a file that you started for this, then go to Open.
The size of the document is up to you but I chose 5000x5000px at 72 PPI. If you’re printing this neon sign, you can click on the Print tab on top to look at all the print presets. For video, you will want the Web tab.
Styles and Colors
The font I chose for this tutorial is Beon by Bastien Sozoo. you can find it on Fontsc. It’s a really nice font for neon sign graphics. If you’re going for a graphic like the Disizit Studios logo, you will want it to be line art.
The color should be set to something bright. Some colors work better than others. Try a few and see what you like!
I chose aqua: R 0, G 255, B 255.
Making it Glow
Once you have typed out your text or finished your graphics, you will want to add a pixel layer under the text/graphics and make it black. This will make it easy to see what we’re going to do next. You can easily hide the layer later when you export if you need the image to have no background.
Next you will want to duplicate the text/graphics layer(s). This can be done by right clicking on the layer and clicking Duplicate or pressing ⌘+J. I duplicated the layer twice. Both of the layers should have a Gaussian Blur applied. The Gaussian Blur can be found in the Filters menu under Blur. I went all the way up to 100px, which is the highest you can go. This is a helpful fact to keep in mind when you create the document because if you make it too big, you may not get the spread you want.
There are two ways to add effects to your layers. Either way, you want to make sure you have the lowest layer of your text/graphics, which is the only layer without the Gaussian Blur. The method to add effects that I am showing in this post is by clicking on the Effects tab in the panel with the Layers tab. The other option is to hit the fx button on the bottom of the Layers panel. This alternative method will give you more options on some effects and they may come in handy sometimes but they were not needed for this effect.
You will need to check Bevel / Emboss. This is completely up to you but I went with an Opacity of 75% and a Radius of 8px.
If you want to learn how to use every feature Affinity Photo without waiting for me to cover all of it, checkout the Affinity Workbook by Serif.
All links to Amazon and eBay are affiliated. This means that, at no extra cost to you, you will support my work through purchasing items when clicking the links. I will make a small commission from the sale.