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customized light beams (tut)

Started Aug 24, 2012 | Discussions thread
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gl2k
gl2k Veteran Member • Posts: 3,232
customized light beams (tut)
3

Create an empty black layer. Select a rectangular brush with hard edges and draw some spots.

Now blur the dots.

Radial Blur settings :
Zoom
Amount : 100

set the origin to the left top corner

Press Ctrl-F one or two times to strengthen the effect

Add some more squares and press Ctrl-F

repeat the process until you get what you want

Ctrl-J to double the layer and set the blend mode of the top layer to "color dodge" or "linear dodge". Alternatively you can use the levels adjustment tool Ctrl-L and play with it.

Now you should have something that looks like that.

The nice thing about this method is that you can carefully adjust where exactly you want additional light streaks.

Finally use this layer on top of your image with blend mode set to color dodge or linear dodge. Since it is white on black you can add a hue&saturation layer to color this layer only. Use the little arrow to link it correctly.

You can overlay a clouds layer to make the light beams look less uniform.

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