Photoshop Tutorial: Rays of Light
This is one of those nice and easy tutorials that require absolutely no artistic skill in order to achieve the desired result. Just follow the steps and you’ll have your rays of light.
I recently used this technique when creating a background for my Twitter page, you can see it here.
Step 1
First of all, create a new document. Once we’ve finished this tutorial, the light rays will look as if they are being emitted from the center of your page. So keep this in mind when choosing the dimensions; if your intention is to have the light rays coming from the side of an image, you’ll need to create an image that is a little more than twice as wide/tall as it needs to be so that you can crop it later. For example, if the effect that you are trying to achieve is light radiating from the lower left corner of a 728×90 banner, then you’ll need to create a document that is initially roughly 1500×1500 pixels. If this is at all unclear, the reason for doing this will quickly become apparent as we progress through the tutorial.
Step 2
Now, we will need to create a gradient, so choose a color for both your foreground and background. Make sure that the gradient type is set to “Foreground to Background” then create a vertical gradient to fill your layer.
Step 3
Once you’re happy with your gradient, go to Filter > Distort > Wave.
First, change the Type to Square.
Number of Generators is fine at 5. The important thing to know here is that the Min and Max Wavelength values must be the same. You can set them as high or low as you’d like, but they must equal one another. Lower values will create more rays of light whereas higher values will result in fewer.
You can play around with Amplitude until you achieve the result that you’re going for. Basically, lower amplitude values will preserve more of the gradient within each vertical strip while higher values will create much more contrast, essentially giving you bands of color that match your initial foreground and background picks.
Leave Scale untouched.
Step 4
Odds are, once you apply the filter, that you’ll be left with a vertical band on the right side of your image that isn’t quite as wide as the others. This will affect our final image, so crop it out. After having done so, ensure that the vertical band on the far left is the opposite of that which appears on the far right. If it’s not, crop it out.
Step 5
Now that you’ve prepared the image, you can apply the final filter. Choose Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates.
The default setting of Rectangular to Polar is fine, you can apply the filter.
Done! Your final image should look something like this
You can play around with this to get the effect that you’re looking for. Try applying a Twirl or Ocean Ripple filter.
I hope that you find this helpful!
Another easy way to do it D’Arcy (Elmer Fudd Voice), is to use a custom brush. I use this one all the time: http://kizzadesigns.deviantart.com/art/Sunrise-Brush-88666146
Works like a charm
Thanks for the link!