New to the forums, not to Photoshop :)

[Datameister]

Different people want different things out of their lightsabers. Personally, I'm a perfectionist with that sort of thing and I want my lightsaber effects to be as realistic and visually appealing as possible. Some people will be satisfied with simpler methods, and there's nothing wrong with that (although I sure made it sound that way in my tutorial ). My tutorial basically says this: use a solid white core; a slightly blurred, colored, and darkened Color Dodge glow; and a blurred and colored Screen glow. These three layers come together to form a photorealistic light source. The most important part of this is the Color Dodge layer, which heavily saturates the edge of the blade, giving it a much more energetic look.