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October 11, 2000 - LIA+ Version 1.3
Instructions for using the Lightsaber Ignition Action Plus (LIA+) for Photoshop 5.0/5.5
Written by Hermes Barreto, III and Rodolfo Bezerra Batista
Email: hermes@lia-plus.com or cavaleiro_jedi@bol.com.br
These files are free for distribution, please include these instructions with the files.

The official LIA website:
http://www.lia-plus.com/
http://www.bluetemptation.com/lia/
Webmaster Email: webmaster@lia-plus.com
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Instructions for LIA+ Version 1.3. Updated Wednesday, October 11, 2000. 

You are telling me that it is possible to do lightsaber blades, blaster shots, ion beams, contact flashes, a rain fizzle effect, ghosts, and holograms with this "ignition" thing? Yes, and it is simple. 
Please read this whole tutorial through to the end as most (if not all) of your questions will be answered here. 

You will get these eight files - 
Lightsaber 2.atn
Sabers - Light Setting.atn
Sabers - Dark Setting.atn
Lasers - Light Setting.atn
Lasers - Dark Setting.atn
Flashes, Holograms and Ghosts.atn
Fizzle - Soft Rain.atn
Fizzle - Hard Rain.atn

Save them in a folder called "Actions", under "Goodies", from "Photoshop 5.0/5.5". If you can't find the folder called "Actions", look for it inside a folder called "Adobe Photoshop Only". After you have done so, open Photoshop. In the Actions tab, click the small triangle pointing right, and choose Load Actions. Load them all. After doing so, open any picture file. You will find some examples on this site for download, or if you wish you can use your own. 

HINT: Macintosh Users Only - make sure to rename the actions, getting rid of the .atn extension. Example: change "Lightsaber 2.atn" to "Lightsaber 2". The actions will not work on your Mac if you fail to do this. LIA, LIA2 and LIA2.2 have a glitch that caused LIA for Macs to be troublesome. This glitch has been fixed with LIA+. 

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS: 

You have probably noticed that there are two kinds of saber and laser actions. One was designed to work in a darker scene, in which the characters are in a dark environment. The other is for when the characters are in an light environment or with a light background. If you are undecided as to which one to use, try them both on the picture and stick with the one which reflects the look you want. If you play around too much, you will have inconsistencies, which you don't want. 

HINT: don't rename any of the actions (unless you are using a Mac) and be sure to load all of them. Then things will work smoothly. 

To make the actions work, use the Pen tool (press "P" on your keyboard) and make your work path with it. If you need to adjust the path, use the Arrow tool (press "A" on your keyboard). After that, go to the Paths Tab and click twice on the name "Work Path". If you are unsure of how to use the Pen tool, check out a tutorial (http://www.designsbymark.com/pstips/misc_pentool.shtml) at a wonderful site called Designs By Mark. 

HINT: be sure to close your path. The path will usually look like a box or a rectangle if you did it correctly. 

HINT: if there is more than one saber in the picture, be sure to do only one at a time. Also, always rotoscope the one behind all others first. This will keep the depth of the picture correct. 

Rename the path to the color you wish the saber to be. This is very important. If you don't do it correctly, the script will not work. Rename the path exactly as it is written here, including the capital letter. If you name your path "Red Saber", "Red Lightsaber" or anything like that, the script won't work. Name it "Red" if it is a saber. If it is a blaster shot, then name it "Red Laser". 

The choices of color for the lightsabers and rain fizzle effects are: 

White
Silver
Gold
Purple
Blue
Light Blue
Green
Yellow
Orange
Red 

The choices for the blaster shots are: 

Ion Beam
Green Laser
Red Laser 

The choices for the contact flashes, holograms, and ghosts are: 

Flash
Hologram
Ghost
Sith Ghost

HINT: red and green sabers are not red and green lasers. The lasers are intended to be like blaster shots and are in no way similar to the lightsaber blades. Thus, when renaming the paths, stick to the name written above. 

Once you have renamed the path, click open the action set called SABERS - DARK SETTING or SABERS - LIGHT SETTING; LASERS - DARK SETTING or LASERS - LIGHT SETTING; or FIZZLE - LIGHT RAIN or FIZZLE - HARD RAIN; or FLASHES, HOLOGRAMS AND GHOSTS (depending on which you are trying to create). Select the corresponding color and click the play button, which is on the bottom section of the actions tab. You can click open the set by clicking on the triangle next to its name, once you have loaded it. 

HINT: if you click twice on the name of the action ("Green Saber" for example), you can assign a function key to make the process faster. This is not necessary but helpful if you are doing a lot of rotoscoping. 

Another thing that should be mentioned is that if you open more than one picture to rotoscope, you should do it first on the last picture you opened. Work your way to the first one you opened because of how this script works. It will work just fine if you follow these directions. If you try to rotoscope a file other than the last of the sequence, you will notice that the effects will be applied to the last picture you opened instead of the one you are trying to do at that moment. An easy way to avoid this problem would be to open one picture at a time, but that is your preference. 

IMPORTANT SIDENOTES: 

How to work the Actions with a filmstrip: 

What you will have to do is simple, but tricky if done incorrectly. The very first thing you have to do is decide which saber you will work on first. Try to work first on the saber that is usually behind any other one in most of the scenes, as in farthest from the camera. 

What you will do next is to take your filmstrip and make all the paths in every frame for that one saber. Keep in mind that you have to make the next frame a subpath and so on. Once you finish, you will have an enormous path with lots of subpaths, one for each frame. Rename the path with the name of the color you will use as described above and hit the play button. 

Start over with the next saber. Be especially careful at the intersection of both sabers, so one does not cross the other the wrong way. If you do have problems with this, you can always change the layer order. Press the play button once you are done selecting this saber and have renamed the work path. Repeat these directions with each additional saber. 

HINT: remember that you don't always have to select all instances of the saber. If you do find that it crosses in front of one not already rotoscoped, you can always do it once the other saber is finished. 

Now you will need to flatten the image. Click on the layers tab and press the little arrow pointing to the right. You will find a menu that will give you the option to flatten the image. Select that option. You may lose all your work if you don't flatten the image. 

Once all is done, save the filmstrip. 

HINT: do the same for the contact flashes. If you find some showing up where you don't want them, you may always delete the layer on which they reside. 

Glow width adjustment: 

You may decide you want to adjust the width of the glow. In order to do that, you will need to go to the actions "Paint Path" and "Paint Path 2" in the LIGHTSABER 2 set. There you will find a command called "Expand". If you click twice on it, nothing will happen. You will have to click on set selection first, then click twice on "Expand" and it will work. 

Once you do this, set the "Paint Path Expand" setting to half the value you put in "Paint Path 2". This will ensure nice TPM-like glows. 

Glow strength adjustment: 

Sometimes you may want to change the intensity or strength of the glow. Go to LIGHTSABER 2, and find the "Blend" action. Once there, you will find 2 actions, both called "Apply Image". 

You can duplicate the second "Apply Image" by dragging it to the icon next to the trash bin (it looks like two squares, one smaller than the other). Once you do this, click twice on it to adjust the percentage of the glow you wish to add. 

HINT: the default is 100%, but you can adjust it as you wish. The lower the number, brighter the glow. Usually anything below 50% doesn't look so good. 

If this is done correctly, the saber glow can be adjusted up to twice the intensity you have. 

Core brightness/blur adjustment: 

In order to adjust the core brightness, go to the action called "Beam" in LIGHTSABER 2 and click twice on "Hue/Saturation". This will open a dialogue box. Don't adjust anything but the slider called "Lightness". If you change anything else, your core will look odd, and you don't want that! If you wish to adjust the core's blurring, then click twice on "Gaussian Blur", right under "Hue/Saturation". 

How to make the rain fizzle effects: 

You won't have to rename the paths if you have already done the sabers. For instance, let's take the example of two people fighting in the rain, one holding an orange saber and the other person holding a blue saber. If you already made the sabers, you might want to put in the rain fizzle. You click open the set you wish, be it hard rain or soft rain, and choose the color of the saber. In this given example, you will click on "Orange Fizzle" and press play and then click on "Blue Fizzle" and press play. Soon you will see the sparks that indicate that water hit the lightsaber blades on your screen. 

Working with contact flashes: 

If you have worked with the sabers or the lasers, you probably have realized that the way to go is using the Pen tool, making a closed path and renaming it the name of the saber or laser color you wish. That is what we use here, but we have other options now - the Freeform Pen tool and the Magnetic Pen tool. 

The Freeform Pen tool and Magnetic Pen tool behave very much like a real pen. They can be found if you go to the Pen tool in the tool menu, click and hold the mouse button and a small menu will pop up with some selections. The third icon is the Freeform Pen Tool. You can draw a very smooth, free form line with it (this is the best choice for contact flashes). The second icon is the Magnetic Pen tool which is best used for the ghost and hologram effects. Using these directions, you should be able to use either the Freeform Pen tool, Magnetic Pen tool, or the regular Pen tool. 

Create your work path and make sure it is closed. Rename the path to "Flash" and click the play button. 

You can make the path as big as you wish for the first contact frame. If you want the effect to work properly, you will have to add it to the following frame by making a much smaller path. 

HINT: try out the contact flashes on still pictures before graduating to filmstrips. 

When working on a filmstrip and once you have figured out how big you want the path or glow to be and you have the first contact flash to your liking, reduce it to a third of its original size in the second frame. 

Working with holograms: 

You can use the HOLOGRAM action in many ways. One of the many ways is using it as it was intended and making a very convincing holographic image (although not transparent) of things already existing in the filmstrip or picture. You can achieve transparency by adding this hologram layer over the original filmstrip. You must create this second filmstrip with the exact same number of frames as the first to fit them together correctly. 

Make a path around the thing you wish to make into a hologram. You will want to use either the Magnetic Pen tool, which snaps to the shape of the thing you are contouring, or the Freeform Pen tool, if you want to trace the object yourself. Do your best to make sure that this path follows the contour of the object/person. This will make the effect look much better once it is rendered. Don't forget to close the path! Rename the path to "Hologram" and click the play button. 

Notice that this action prompts you twice to mess with the image, in a command called "Image Size". You will get either dimension of it, double it in the first prompt, feed it to the corresponding field, and click "OK". In the second prompt, you will type in the original dimensions of the figure, so it can be applied to the original image, in a layer called "Hologram". 

Transparency Settings: you can adjust the layer opacity so the effect becomes see-through. The default level is 75%, but it will be up to you to make it less or more transparent. 

Jedi and Sith ghosts: 

Now you can make the Jedi ghost effect and another effect which is a vision of what a Sith ghost would look like. As usual, they will be rendered in their separate layers - the difference being that each of these effects uses two layers instead of just one and they automatically link the layers. 

What you will do is like the hologram. Make a path around the thing you wish to make like a ghost, with any Pen setting you wish. Rename the path to "Ghost" or "Sith Ghost" depending on which effect you want, then click play. 

TROUBLESHOOTING: 

If you get an error message saying "The command Set Selection is not available", it means you didn't close your path. This script uses closed paths, not lines, to create the effects. In order to close the path, select the path you were working on and in the paths tab, use the pen tool to close it by clicking in one end and then on the other. Do this just as you would do with a real pen. 

A LAST NOTE: 

These default settings are for 320 X 240 pictures and video. If you are utilizing these Actions on other size pictures, you may wish to adjust the glow width. Just follow the steps detailed above. You shouldn't have any problems with that. 

If you want the original LIA+ Version 1.2 that was made for 640 X 480 pictures and video, it is still available on the download page. Please keep in mind that the Version 1.2 Actions will not continue to be updated. 

CREDITS: 
I hope that you have fun with this method, and I would only ask you to put a credit in your fan film to "Running Lynx Films" or to myself. If you can't, that will be OK but credit is due. Such as credit to those who helped enormously to make this script available and nice-looking to all of you, the ones who tested it and special thanks go to Zoid CrazyMan (AKA Rodolfo Bezerra Batista), my cousin, who had the idea for this action file and edited its first version; to BPJedi (AKA Shane Achord) and FryGuy (AKA Donald Campbell), who went beyond their own exhaustion just to make sure that it worked on a filmstrip too; to Anrev DeKart, for helping me make Yellow a real Yellow and Gold a real Gold; to Qui-Gon Jimmy, who helped me with the look of the Ghosts and Holograms; and to sh4rk (AKA lo||i, forceflicks, & Julia Marie Hoffa), who made this available to you all, making what I thought would be just a small page into a well-crafted piece of art and love. 

May the Force be with you, my friends. 

Lin-Si-Tar Konnair, AKA Hermes Barreto, III.
hermes@lia-plus.com or cavaleiro_jedi@bol.com.br