Album Cover Design Research: Photoshop Techniques

We have been looking into techniques that can be applied via Adobe Photoshop to create effects of album covers, and one that we've been looking into and practicing with is and effects that creates a glowing line that wraps around figures in the photograph. This effect involves creating a path, removing sections of it behind the figures to give it a 3-dimensional effect, and then adding glows and blurs to it.

As a test I used a picture of the band Skindred as it was a high quality photo, so even at a large size it wasn't distorted. Below are the picture before and after the effects were put on.

The process I followed to create the effect was as follows:

1. I created a new layer and drew a path with the pen tool.
2. I set the brush tool to 5px and 100% hardness, then returned to the pen tool and right clicked on the path. On the pop up menu I clicked stroke path.
3. I use the eraser to remove any parts of the path that I wanted to appear behind the people, creating a 3-D effect.
4. Using layer styles I created an inner and outer glow on the path. I duplicated this layer, removed the glows and added a gaussian blur.
5. Then I created a new layer and set the brush tool to 3px and 0% hardness. In the brush palette I activated shape dynamics and scattering. Then I used the pen tool to right click on the path and used stroke path again. This created the particle effect on the path.
6. After that I used the eraser again to remove any particles that I wanted to appear behind the people.
7. Then I repeated those steps until I had as many glowing lines as I wanted.

This created an impressive, professional effect, however when I come to designing the actual album digipak I will have to work on creating neater paths, and if I use the effect will probably do so in a more subtle way.