Tutorial Photoshop - Light Beam ~ Muad Online

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Tutorial Photoshop - Light Beam

7:37 AM Achmad Muadzin No comments

Photoshop: Light Beam

Introduction:
In this tutorial I am assuming that the reader, you, has intermediate photoshop skills and knows how to use the

photoshop tools and where they are. Therefore I will not spoon feed you. You should know how

to use the blur filters: Motion blur, Radial blur, and Gaussian Blur very comfortably.

This tutorial is not very hard at all and you should be able to make something like my beam if

you follow the steps I took. Please remember that as you get better with photoshop its more and

more up to you to decide what looks better or worse. The steps are not set in concrete! You may

get a better beam by doing something I didnt.

Time to complete: 20-30min

Step: 0

Open a new document. Make it big enough. I

used 2000x1500. Fill the background with black.

Step: 1
We are now going to make the main body of

our beam. Make a new layer and Select a rectangle about 20px wide and 1000px tall.

Step: 2
Fill the rectangle with white on

the new layer. Duplicate the layer and use Gaussian blur on it to give the original rectangle a

little bit of a glow. Merge the layers.

Step: 3
Using the smudge tool with a

"chalk" brush

and a 14% strength make a water droplet shape out of the bottom of our rectangle.

Step: 4
Duplicate the layer. Increase the

strength of the smudge tool to about 30% and make the droplet bigger.

Set the opacity of the new layer down to about 50%.

Step: 5
Use the Light

Rays tutorial to make a whole bunch of light rays around our beam. Each on its own layer of

course.

Step: 6
If some of the

light rays dont fit in well you can use the liquify tool to bend them a little. You should now have

something like this.

Step: 7
Merge all the Light Rays onto

one layer. Duplicate that layer a few times and add various blur effects. I used motion blur at 52

degrees and then on another copy of the light rays layer motion blur at -52 degrees. Then I

added a layer of Gaussian blur to make the rays look like they are glowing.

Step: 8
We are now going to add some

dust particles. Using the

Dust Particles tutorial make dust around the rays.

Step: 9
Duplicate the dust layer a few times and add

various blur settings. I used radial blur to give the beam the effect that it was moving really fast.

And some Gaussian blur to give the dust a glow.