How were the lightsaber effects done in Star Wars?

According to Wookieepedia, the the props are made of wood.

Also, due to the brittleness of the stunt blades used during this fight, which were little more than wooden dowels, Diamond was forced to instruct Alec Guinness and David Prowse to stop their blades before contact due to their fragility.

If there isn't any particularly special feature about the props to separate them from the rest of the image, were they done manually?

How were the lightsaber effects accomplished?

I'm interested in all the movies, but mainly episode IV/original trilogy.

Answer

In the video below, Mark Hamill and George Lucas briefly discuss the methods used to create the lightsaber effects in the Original Trilogy films.

The effect was largely achieved by coating a thin wooden tube with reflective material (made out of movie screen) and shining bright spotlights onto it in order to make it appear fluorescent. They then used film filters in post-production to make that effect seem substantially more pronounced and to add colouring.

Later films also used a technique called rotoscoping to add the light flares and colouration.

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