ray_of_light

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Ray of Light

Original Photoshop tutorial in Links section. IMPORTANT : Practice using small images, the Motion Blur Filter will take a long time to process large photos.

1. Open image.

imaage 02

2. Duplicate background layer. Go to Colors > Levels and move middle arrow all the way to the right. This way you'll separate the bright areas in the image.

3. Now you will need to form the ray of light. Go to Filters > Blur > Motion Blur. Use these properties: Blur Type = Zoom, Length = 256 and check Blur Outward option. Now choose the area where you would like the ray of light to zoom out from and type X and Y values in Blur Center.

4. Press Ctrl + f to repeat Motion Blur Filter. Change name of top layer to "ray of light".

5. Change top layer's mode to Screen. To increase the intensity of the ray of light go to Colors > Levels and move the right arrow towards the left. You can also experiment moving the left arrow a little to the right.

6. Add layer mask and with a black brush paint on areas where the light shouldn't appear.

7. A view of the layer mask:

8. If you wish you can increase the ray's color saturation.

9. For this particular image I duplicated to top layer and changed its mode to Overlay. You will need to experiment with different layer modes (soft light, overlay, screen) and opacities.

10. Again increase top layer's color saturation ( this is optional ). Sometimes when increasing the ray's saturation an ugly color banding pattern can be created. To eliminate simply apply a small amount of Gaussian Blur ( a blur radius of about 5 ) to the ray of light layers. Use only a small amount of blur to avoid destroying the rays of light.

11. The final image :