Step 5: Add An Outer Glow Layer Style

Let's add a bit more interest to our outline effect by applying an Outer Glow layer style as well. With the Layer Style dialog box still open, click directly on the words Outer Glow on the left of the dialog box. Make sure you click directly on the words themselves, not just inside the checkbox to the left of the words. We want to be able to change some options for the layer style, and the only way to gain access to the options is by clicking directly on the layer style's name:

This changes the middle column of the Layer Style dialog box to the options for the Outer Glow. By default, the color of the glow is set to yellow, which I think works fine with this effect so I'm going to leave it alone. Increase the Opacity of the outer glow to 100%. Then, down in the Elements section of the options, increase the Spread to around 6% and the Size to around 30 px:

You may need to experiment a bit on your own with these settings depending on the size of your image, but when you're done, your outline effect should look something like this:

Click OK to exit out of the Layer Style dialog box at this point. We're done applying our layer styles.

Step 6: Boost The Color Of The Main Subject With A "Hue/Saturation" Adjustment Layer

The main outline effect is now complete, but let's enhance our image even more with a couple of color adjustments and some blurring. First, we'll boost the color saturation of our main subject. For that, we can use a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. We want to make sure, though, that our adjustment layer affects only the main subject, not the entire image, so we're going to clip the adjustment layer to "Layer 2", which is the layer that contains our main subject. Hold down your Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key and click on the New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. Select Hue/Saturation from the list of adjustment layers that appears:

By holding down the Alt / Option key as we click on the New Adjustment Layer icon, we tell Photoshop to pop open the New Layer dialog box which allows us to set some options before the adjustment layer is added. Directly below the Name option is an option called Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask. This option, if selected, will clip the adjustment layer to the layer directly below it, which means, in our case, that whatever we do with our adjustment layer will affect only our main subject on "Layer 2". Click inside the checkbox to select this option, then click OK to exit out of the New Layer dialog box:

As soon as we exit out of the dialog box, the Hue/Saturation dialog box appears. We want to use it to increase the color saturation of our main subject, so click on the Saturation slider in the middle of the dialog box and drag it towards the right. The further you drag to the right, the more you'll increase color saturation, so keep an eye on your image in the document window as you drag the slider to make sure you don't overdo it. I'm going to drag my Saturation slider to a value of around +35, which gives my main subject a nice boost in color:

Click OK to exit out of the dialog box when you're done. If we look in the Layers palette for a moment, we can see the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer sitting above "Layer 2". Notice how the adjustment layer is indented to the right. This tell us that the layer is clipped to the layer below it:

Here's my image after boosting the color saturation of my main subject:

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