How do you make an object with light properties but not give off light?

I know I've seen this mentioned in the middle of some other thread but can't find it. I know it has something to do with a prim's side zero and I believe side zero is the topside. Do you make it black and all the others white or the other way around? I need to brighten a sign/prim's appearance without adding light to the surrounding area.

1.7 has full bright which does exactly what you want. There are light killing scripts out there but it's been claimed that they don't work.

Yes, you set side 0 to black. This page shows the side numbers for various prims. 0 is generally the top...

I'm not sure why you'd want to do this though - SL is funny about light textures - it STILL makes the prim act as a ray source for light, even if it doesn't actually light anything up. Why do you want have a light source that isn't one?

In the meantime you can make the zero side (greater z) full black. It will stop reflecting light due to the fact that the light an object emits is based on the colour of its top side. It will still appear "lighted".

I'm making a large neon sign, (transparent everywhere except for the text). If I set it to be a light source, it overwhelmingly lights everything to the color I have it set. And with any other property selected it looks drab especialy at night.