Learn to make a graphic based with masks and brush strokes.Light Beam Graphic
In this tutorial I will be teaching you how to create magical looking beams to enhance your pictures!
You can use any picture you like but I’ll be using this picture.
First we want to select the pen tool to create the base for our beam. Before you begin make sure your settings are set to paths and pen tool.
Make a new raster layer. And then begin drawing a squiggly line around Lindsay’s body. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just make sure you curve the lines nicely. Your shape should look something like this:
Now that we have a nice looking shape, we need to give it a stroke. Select your brush tool and select a 7px circle default brush with 100% hardness. Make sure your foreground color is white. The brush we select will be used for the line on our beam, so select your size and hardness wisely!
Go back to your pen tool and right click the path on your picture. Select stroke path.
A window should come up. Select Brush and make sure stimulate pressure is checked off. Click okay and your beam should now have taken shape!
Right click your path once more and select delete path to get rid of your path. Now you can clearly see your shape.
Now select your lasso tool and cut away every other beam in front of her body to create the illusion that the beam is going around her body.
After you’re done your image should look like this:
We can begin to add effects to the beam to bring it to life. Right click on your beam layer and select blending options
Match your settings to mine for Outer Glow (color #f58cb2 used):
And then again for Inner Glow (color #f5c2ce used):
Duplicate your layer and then right click and select Clear Layer Style
to get rid of all the effects for that layer.
Now go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and set it to 4.9 pixels.
Your picture should now look like this:
To add ‘baby sparkles’ to give it a more magical look, we need to change our brush settings. Select the brush settings panel
and now proceed to match your settings to mine:
Now once you’ve finished, make a new raster layer and go over parts of your beam to give it a magical look. You can change your brush size and use different opacities to your liking.
You can now colorize the picture to your liking. You can search through my advanced picture tutorials to learn to colorize your picture in different ways. An easier way would be to just play with your adjustment layers (change the colors) and set them to different layer options.
My picture turned out like this:
Thank you so much! This really helped. I learned alot :P
Aimee-Louise said this on March 24 · # Reply