Beam Light Effect

SoLiDsNaKe2586 · Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 1:09 am Post subject: Beam Light Effect

OK, this is my very first tutorial people! Go easy on me. Brow

This effect is when you have a light in your picture and you want to make it look more "three dimensional." Or make it look like it's in a dust room or something where you can see the light in the air.

What helps me with getting the shape right when I'm selecting a specific area is zooming in. So zoom in almost as far as possible.

Make sure you either use the lasso tool or use the elliptical marquee depending on the shape of the light. To get the elliptical marquee, click and hold down the mouse button and then move over and simply select it.

Now you have it selected.

For this picture, I'm going to make the light source a little more glowing so that it looks like the flashlight is on. To do this, we use filter/artistic/neon glow. Make sure the glow is white or whatever color you want it to look like.

Glow size: -24. Glow brightness: 50.

Now pick the lasso tool and make a shape somewhat like this:

Stretch it from the edge of the light and how far you want the light to go.

Now go filter/stylize/wind with the settings depicted below (or whatever side you made the light beams go, whether from the right or from the left).

If you want the beams to go longer then press CTRL+F or repeat the filter until you have reached the desired look.

Here I added a laser sight at the bottom. Your result should look a bit like this:

Go easy on me. Dead

Jersey Hacker · Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 2:16 am Post subject:

Wow, thanks alot for posting Solid Snake, very nice effect, and welcome to photoshopforums.com!

Patrick · Administrator

Thanks for posting.

SoLiDsNaKe2586 · Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 10:49 am Post subject:

Thanks

I hope to post many more to come

Datameister · Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 11:14 am Post subject:

Yes, welcome! Thanks for posting this.

I'd suggest you spend some time studying the way luminescent objects appear on film (or in digital photos). Look at the way the Hue, Saturation, and Brightness change around the object, and try to recreate that effect. Also, the less you rely on obvious filters, the better. Obvious filters immediately stand out to anyone with Photoshop experience, thus making the effect ineffective.

Good job, though. Keep on postin'!