Crazy Lighting in Photoshop Tutorial

In this tutorial I will show you how to get a very cool effect that will look like the images below when finished:

The fist step is to get a collection of images that you want to bend to make your background. What I did was took the end effects of many of my tutorials, and used them so that you are able to follow along easier. You can use any images that you like, though I think the 3d abstract ones look the best.

So, lets start blending. First make an image with the bg color of this:

and a width and height of around 500

Now take your first image and put it in your picture. I used a 3d image.

Now on a new layer, past in another picture, and lower the opacity to around 50%

Now on a new layer, past in another picture, and lower the opacity to around 50% It may look

little bad now, but tick with me.

Once again, on a new layer, past in another picture, and lower the opacity to around 50%

Now, that's enough pictures for now. You can add more if you would like, just keep adding them until you are satisfied.

Now, make a new layer and change the mode to color. Fill your layer with this color:

Now, flatten your image by going layer> merge visible

Now take out your dodge tool, and start rubbing. Make it really light in the bottom left corner, and let the light slowly travel outward. Your image should look like this:

Now, on a new layer, take out your paintbrush, choose a small brush size and get out a light purple color. Start making dots around your picture, more of them towards the lightest areas, and less as you go out. Now change that layer opacity to around 50%. Your picture should now look like this:

Now I added some typography and other trendy image and I'm all done!Your image should look close to mine below.

How to Create Intense Light Streaks in Photoshop

A couple of subscribers left their comment on a previous post that collated a range of inspiring graphic artwork from digital artists across the world. The commentors asked how the light stream effect on some of the pieces was created. I did a little research and picked up a couple of tips from similar tutorials to present a walkthrough on how to create intense light streaks flowing around an object or person.

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Firstly find a subject to base the flowing light streams on. I picked out an image of a drinks can to relate to the original piece of artwork that inspired the subscriber.
Using the Pen Tool draw a path around the object, make the selection and paste into a new document using a black background.

Reselect the object by CMD/CTRL + Click on the layer, go to Select > Feather and enter 1px. Inverse the selection and hit delete.
Duplicate the layer and set the layer style to Multiply, drop the Opacity to suit.
These tips help the object blend with the background a little more realistically by erasing out the hard edges and altering the lighting and shadows.

On a new layer draw a circular marquee and add a Gradient fading to black with a colour of your choice, here I've chosen a cool green.
Transform the gradient and squash it vertically to add a little perspective.

Open up some kind of texture and paste it into the document. This particular image is a watercolour texture from the GoMedia Freebies. Desaturate to remove the colour.

Change the blending mode to Multiply to render the white areas of the texture transparent.

Back on the can or object layer add an Outer Glow through the Layer Styles, the key is to change the blending mode to Color Dodge to give a really intense glow.

Prepare a brush for creating the flowing light streams, experiment with the brush settings to give a thin tapered stroke. The main option to adjust is the Control and Minimum Diameter settings in the Shape Dynamics section.

Use the Pen Tool to draw a smooth flowing path, with the Pen Tool still selected right click and select Stroke Path, ensure the Brush option is selected along with Simulate Pressure.

Add another Outer Glow to the layer of the brush stroke using similar Color Dodge settings.

Draw as many streams as you like around the object, keeping the lines flowing as smoothly as possible in a variety of directions.

The Color Dodge effect works the best when the objects overlap the coloured gradient, here I scale up the gradient to allow for more light effects around the object.

Unfortunately the straight edges of the texture layer show through, use a large eraser to blend them out.

Add a little atmosphere to the object by placing a few blobs of colour on a new layer. Changing the blending mode to Soft Light will give a slight green glow to the object as if it is reflecting the green light from the intense glowing lines, overall adding a little more realism.

Make a selection from the object layer, inverse and delete out the unwanted area.

The light streams look okay flowing out from underneath the object but they would look a little better if they interacted in some way. Move the light stream layer above the object.

Erase out the majority of the lines leaving select areas which blend into or around the object.

A common addition to this trendy style is an array of glowing light particles. Setup another brush, this time play around with the Scatter, Spacing and Size Jitter options.

Brush in a range of dots and blobs with varying brush sizes to cover the whole of the object and flowing lines. Add the same Outer Glow layer style as the light stream layer.

Erase out the most of the particles to leave a subtle effect with slight differences in opacity.

Finish off the image with a few focal rings on multiple layers with very low opacity. These help relate to the objects that appear when photographing light with a camera, adding a little extra realism.

Color Effects with Alpha Channel

		Preparations: We will need an image of a model, prefably a close-up on the face. I'm using Keeley Hazell for this tutorial. All rights of these resources belong to their respective owners.
		Step 1 - Setting Up Background: Create a document of size 750 by 550px and save it as example.psd. Fill the background with #E6D4A7.
		Step 2 - Create Strip Pattern: Create a new document with 3 by 3px, then create a new layer above Background layer. Select Pencil tool with 1px and color #000000, paint 3 dots as shown on the left. Delete the Background layer. Press Ctrl+A and go to Edit > Define Pattern. Close this document w/o saving. In example.psd, create a new layer. Select Paint Bucket tool and fill in the pattern you created.
		Step 3 - Transparent Rainbow: Create a new layer above the rest. Select the Gradient tool and choose Transparent Rainbow. Drag the gradient from top-left of the document diagonally across to the bottom-right.
		Step 4 - Create a Color Frame: Select the rainbow gradient layer and go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set the radius to 250. Create a layer mask on this layer and fill the mask with #FFFFFF. Using Soft Brush tool of size 350px and color #000000, paint center of the mask as shown on left.
		Step 5 - Selecting Image Channel: Open up your model image and drag it into example.psd using Move tool. Hide the rest of layers except for the model. Go to Channels tab and choose the brightess image out of the Red, Green and Blue (for mine is Red).
		Step 6 - Create Alpha Channel: Ctrl+left click on the Red channel layer to load selection of those bright areas. Click on Create New Channel to generate an alpha channel and fill it with #FFFFFF. Using Soft Brush tool of size 100px and color #FFFFFF, paint away the grey background behind the model. Note: View animation on the left.
		Step 7 - Gradient on Model: Ctrl+left click on the Alpha Channel to load selection. Go to Select > Inverse. Back to Layers tab and create a new layer. Fill the selection with any color. Right-click on the layer and choose Blending Options. Activate Gradient Overlay and choose the preset Yellow, Violet, Orange, Blue. Set its angle to -45 and scale to 150.
		Step 8 - Enhancing the Colors: Duplicate the model layer and go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set its radius to 3px. Right-click on duplicated layer and choose Blending Options. Set the mode of Gradient Overlay to Hard Light.
		Step 9 - Drawing Lines: Create a new layer and draw some white vertical lines of various sizes with Pencil tool. You will need to hold down the Shift key while drawing so your lines will be straight.
		Step 10 - Fading Lines: Go to Edit > Transform > Rotate and set its value to 45. Using Soft Eraser tool of size 150px, fade the two ends of the lines. Repeat Step 9 and 10 if you need more lines on your model.
		Optional: Add some texts to complete the design. That's all! Hope you like this tutorial. Video tutorial is posted at Vimeo Click here to view

Create a magical rainbow color flame in Photoshop

One of the things I've seen around quite a bit lately is a transparent rainbow gradient effect on a dark background. It seems to me that flashy transparent gradients are in these days. They make me think about magic. Today I'll show you how you can create a magical rainbow color flame. OK, maybe I'm using too many words in a row here, but it's the best I can do to describe this.

I should tell you upfront that for this tutorial basic knowledge of Photoshop is needed.

Draw smoky lines

First we start with the creation of the smoky lines by using the Pen tool. Use a white fill for each shape layer and an Opacity of 40%. Set the Layer mode of the layer to Overlay and the Fill to 0%.

Double click on the right on one of the layers to open the Layer Styles. Add a white Drop Shadow of 100% Opacity and set the Blend Mode to Overlay. Distance and Spread is set to 0 and Size to 11. Next, make sure to uncheck Layer Knocks Out Shadow. Now check the Gradient Overlay in the styles palette. Choose Overlay as blend mode. Double click the Gradient thumbnail to edit the color stops in the Preset window. Select white as color for the left stop and give it 0% Opacity do the same for the right stop. Now add a stop at the Location of 50% (right in the middle), select white as color and give it an Opacity of 100%. Click OK to apply these Layer Styles to the layer. Select Copy Layer Style from the dropdown menu in the Layers palette (arrow on the right of the layer next to the fx icon). Now select all other smoke line Shape layers and select Paste Layer Style from that same dropdown menu. The style should be applied to all these layers now.

Add a cold gradient color flame

First we'll create a rainbow gradient preset. Select the Gradient tool in the Toolbox and go to the Gradient picker in the Toolbar at the top. If I'm not mistaken there should be a gradient called Transparent Rainbow by default in there. Double click to edit it. Remove the orange and yellow stop and move the the green, aqua, dark blue and hot pink stop so the colors are more equally divided over the length of the gradient. Give the gradient a name, for example 'Cold Gradient' and click the Newbutton. Click OK to close the window. Set the Opacity of the gradient in the Toolbar to 50%.

Create a new layer, select the Elliptical Marquee tool and drag a circular selection (hold down shift while dragging) towards the bottom of the smoky lines. Make sure the circular selection is big enough so you can add a Feather 85 pixels: Select > Modify > Feather. Now select the Gradient tool and drag a perfect horizontal line from the left of the circle and release the right of the circle (see image to the right above).

Touch up the flame using the Smudge tool

If all goes well your gradient should look more or less as in the image below. To be extra save, create a copy of this layer first just in case. This touching up and reshaping needs a bit of work and the result could be too messy. This way you can come back and give it another try.

Select the Smudge tool to reshape the gradient a bit so it looks a bit more like a colored flame. I've used a very big brush to reshape the area at the bottom and a smaller one to smudge out some colors so it looks a bit like they follow some of the smoky lines.

Add a warm gradient color flame

Add a second gradient effect in a new layer on top of the previous one. Just like before, select the Gradient tool in the Toolbox and go to the Gradient picker in the Toolbar at the top. Select the gradient called Transparent Rainbow from the dropdown gradient list and double click to edit. Remove the dark blue and aqua stop in the gradient. Rearrange the stops so the colors are equally divided over the entire length. Give the gradient a name, something like 'Warm Gradient' and click the Newbutton. Click OK to close the window. Make sure the Opacity of the gradient is set to 50% in the Toolbar.

Apply the gradient just like the previous one except create the selection a bit smaller and place it more towards the top of the smoky lines instead of at the bottom. Touch up and reshape the gradient using the Smudge tool. Make sure to make a copy of your layer (just to be safe) so you can always come back to it in case the result is not looking good.

Add glowing sparks

To add some extra magic effect, we'll add some sparkles. In one of my previous tutorials I've already showed you how to create glowing sparks. Anyhow here is it again to refresh your memory (but with slightly different settings). Open the Brushes palette (F5 or Window > Brushes). Choose the 21 sized feathered brush. Check Shape Dynamics and Scattering. Select Brush Tip Shape and in the sliders at the bottom, set the Hardness to 0%. Check Spacing and drag the slider towards 403%. Select Scattering, check Both Axes and put the Scatter to 775%. Select Shape Dynamics and change the Size Jitter slider to 100%

Create a new layer on top of the other layers and set the Layer mode to Overlay. Select the Brush tooland select white as Foreground color. Now draw a random line. Duplicate the layer with the sparks once or twice depending on the glow effect you want to achieve. Then merge these layers back together (command/control + e).

My end result

Here is my end result. I've added some stars as well in 3 different colors each as a Shape layer: hot pink, aqua blue and bright green. They where drawn in Illustrator and pasted into Photoshop as a Shape layer.