Apr 29, 200848

How to Create Brilliant Light Streaks in Photoshop

Lighting effects have become quite popular, and are an effective way to add bright eye catching details to a photo or illustration. In this tutorial, you will learn a simple technique for creating brilliant light streaks which can be used in different ways to add motion and brightness to your designs.

Step 1

First, lets create a nice background for our effect. Open up a new Photoshop file, and fill the background with black. Now, create a new layer and fill it with white. We will use the Lighting Effects filter (Filters > Render > Lighting Effects) on this layer to create a nice soft gradient. Next to the Intensity slider, choose any color that you like as long as it is somewhat dark. For this example, I have chosen a dark pink/purple.

lighting_panel.jpg

Step 2

Now lets create a light from which all of our streaks will be created. Start by creating a new layer and setting it’s blend mode to screen. Then use the Elliptical Marquee Tool to make a circular selection and Feather(Select > Modify > Feather) it with a value of 20 pixels. This will give our light a nice glow around the edges. Using the Radial Gradient Fill tool, we are going to give it some color and intensity. I like to use 3 colors for the gradient. The first and inner most color should be white or something close to it. Make sure to start the fill in the middle of your selection and end it a the edge.

gradient.jpg

Step 3

Make a copy of the light layer that we just created, and hide the original. You will need it later to make additional streaks. Now, lets scale(Edit > Transform > Scale) the light so that it is much flatter. Doing this allows you to control the thickness of your streak.

scaled.jpg

Step 4

Now we get to start having fun. To give our light that streak look there are two filters we can use: Wave(Filter > Distort > Wave) and Twirl(Filter > Distort > Twirl). By using Wave, you can achieve some very nice looking irregular paths for your light. Like any other filter with sliders, it takes some tweaking to achieve the result you are after, but you will probably need to up the wave length and amplitude considerably. Also, try applying the Wave filter multiple times to the same layer.

wave.jpg

The Twirl filter will give you a streak that is moving in a more radial type of path.

twirl.jpg

Also, don’t be afraid to combine the two. By doing so you will be adding more detail to each streak, and making the overall effect more interesting.

streak_final.jpg

48 Comments

  • dZine
    Apr 29, 2008

    A very simple yet powerful effect, thanks!

  • lex
    Apr 29, 2008

    really nice effect!

  • empe
    Apr 29, 2008

    nice one, dude!!!

  • David
    Apr 29, 2008

    nice tutorial! looks good.

  • Jack
    May 1, 2008

    Hey, nice tutorial. I’ll try this out and see what else I can apply it too. Would be good for smaller images and icon backgrounds as it is quite eye catching.

    Thanks,

  • Mario Borg
    May 1, 2008

    very cool tutorial, thanks for this!!

  • San Diego Web Designer
    May 6, 2008

    Awesome simple yet eye-catching effect. I hope to use it in one of my sites :)

    Thank you-

  • StoutLabs - How To Create Brilliant Light Streaks In Photoshop
    May 7, 2008

    [...] friend Henry Jones has whipped up an amazingly simple but effective Photoshop tutorial on creating dramatic light streaks.  The end result could be used for anything from desktop wallpapers to website background [...]

  • Fabio Sasso
    May 8, 2008

    Really cool effect, thanks for sharing ;)

  • Rachel
    May 12, 2008

    Amazing how simple it is to achieve this effect. Great tutorial, thanks!

  • Captain-Varro
    May 12, 2008

    Thats a brilliant tutorial there, shows how easy Photoshop can be… I can’t afford the software, but this will be good to know if I get to use it at school. :)

  • Shane
    May 12, 2008

    That’s a very nice effect, and very well explained. Gonna have a play :)

  • Ps3 Update 2.17
    May 13, 2008

    Good site I “Stumbledupon” it today and gave it a stumble for you.. looking forward to seeing what else you have..later

  • Buttons by Benny
    May 13, 2008

    I’ve never seen it done that way. Very cool. Thanks.

  • jad
    May 13, 2008

    thank u gr8 effect :D

  • Tanner Christensen
    May 14, 2008

    Very cool, stumbled.

  • Dave
    May 14, 2008

    Well Done.

  • Jenny
    May 14, 2008

    That’s pretty nifty. I’m gonna try it and see how mine comes out.

  • Chris
    May 15, 2008

    On my Photoshop program, the Lighting Effects doesn’t work. When i am on render under filter, the lighting effects letters are not black, however they are a translucent grey.

  • Qbrushes
    May 15, 2008

    love the effect.

  • andrew
    May 16, 2008

    the effect only works on RGB images for those of you who can’t use photoshop help

  • niteworks
    May 17, 2008

    Wow, really nice effect. I never thought it would be so simple to create these streaks.

  • Cobus Bester
    May 17, 2008

    Awesome Tutorial! The possibilities of what you can achieve with this simple technique is endless. Thanks for posting this.

  • TzG
    May 17, 2008

    Nice, I usually use the pen tool to make streaks of light, I think I can use this.

  • BestJobs4U
    May 17, 2008

    Nice tutorial.
    Stumbled it!

  • john
    May 21, 2008

    great effect.
    but im having a problem at step 4 :(
    ive shrunk the thing down to narrow and thin(ish) and then when i try and apply any effects it doesnt do it. well it does do it, but they have no noticeable affect (the white bit gets a little bit blurred at the most). anyone care to shed some light?

    thanks in advance,
    regards john.

  • john
    May 22, 2008

    cancel that last comment :)
    i’d just shrunk the thing too much. works fine now :)
    stumbling it now.

  • Henry
    May 22, 2008

    john,

    Glad to hear that you figured it out.

  • Web Design
    May 22, 2008

    Sick tutorial, great effect = love it! Thank you for taking the time to show us the process.

  • Abhinav
    May 25, 2008

    nice one..you could just twirl a rectangle to get a similar effect, but the varying pressure in this one makes it much better! thnx..
    chk out my blog too if anyone is interested in wallpapers and tutorials.. mind it i am still an amateur!!
    [thephotoshopper(dot)blogspot(dot)com]

  • sir jorge
    May 26, 2008

    this is great, i just hope that no one over uses it…but alas…it will most likely happen.

  • Colin Miller - Freelance web designer
    May 27, 2008

    Nice technique, I have been looking for something like this for a while. Good stuff!

  • Jurgen
    May 28, 2008

    What a simple way… thanx!

  • Daniel
    May 28, 2008

    Nice one, simple but very cool!

  • Aleks
    Jun 2, 2008

    Great, thanks!

  • Toni
    Jun 2, 2008

    Cool! Thanks! I’ll definitely use the technique you described for creating wavy lines.

  • 咕嘟
    Jun 5, 2008

    nice

  • Matthew
    Jun 14, 2008

    hey henry,
    at step 4 im on the copied layer and i want to apply the filter (filter > distort) but under distort the only active option is “lens correction”? cant select anything else (wave/twirl)
    loving the effect though, once completed..
    hahah

  • JB Burayag
    Jun 14, 2008

    Hey,

    This is awesome!

    Great!

  • snehil
    Jun 18, 2008

    ohh man i know i will sound a lil noob
    bt m nt geting the secon step.plz help

  • eliza millan
    Jun 25, 2008

    Very nice tutorial, thanks I learned something new

  • IBK
    Jul 1, 2008

    Good and easy effect thx again

  • Tom
    Jul 6, 2008

    Hi. I cant find the Elliptical Marquee Tool for step 2. I have Adobe CS 2, does that matter? I cant find it T_T

  • jookeer
    Jul 7, 2008

    very nice but i have one problem on step2… where can i find the Radial Gradient Fill tool?
    thx

  • Henry
    Jul 7, 2008

    @Tom - If you click on the Rectangular Marquee Tool, you will see the Elliptical Marque along with some others.

    @jookeer - If you click on the Gradient Tool in the tool bar, you will find the Radial Gradient Tool at the top.

    Hope that helped.

  • David
    Aug 2, 2008

    Wow i like it it’s so cool I did one But i don’t Look the same!!

    http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/gg162/machbr10/Twril.jpg

  • Maxime
    Aug 3, 2008

    I’ve go a problem with step 2.
    How do you change the color of the radial gradient tool ?
    I clicked on ‘gradient tool’ on the left,
    then, on the upper part of the screen, I clicked on ‘radial gradient’
    If I drag a line, I just get a white light there…
    Help would be much appreciated because I’m new with photoshop.

  • Neal Trivedi
    Aug 11, 2008

    Simply S U P E R B….

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