Rob Goodlatte

Very cool effects that I call “light threads” can be achieved in Photoshop with very little effort. You can layer the effect to acheive an organic-looking image, or hue it for an underwater effect. If you layer the effect correctly the end result has a great sense of depth. The tutorial is quite short and incredibly simple. It takes less than five minutes.

The header graphic for Junction’s Web site was produced using this effect, and I’ve had a few people ask how I created it. Your milage may vary based on the source images you choose.

The end result

Picking source images

Find some photographs with a lot of contrast between very bright elements and a black background. Specially, you’re looking for fine points of light against a very dark background. Fireworks shots are fantastic. Here’s the three I used, shot in Seattle on the 4th of July.

Take each image and apply a motion blur (Filter > Blur > Motion Blur), at a maximum distance and at the angle you’d like. You should slightly vary the angle (less than 5 degrees in either direction) between photographs to get a more organic look.

Drag each image into one Photoshop document with one layer for each image. Change the blending mode of each image to either “Pin Light” or Overlay, depending on the effect you want. You can also duplicate layers and apply layer masks to them to isolate interesting colors from each image. Finally, I modified the hue/saturation of some layers to produce the colors I wanted (Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation).

That’s it! As I said, this tutorial is incredibly simple, but can produce fantastic results.

 

1. Ian Lotinsky December 13th at 10:02 pm

   Very nice! How in the world did you discover that? (I’m not the artistic type naturally and am curious how you people cook up magic like this.)

   Love the blog!

   - Ian

2. Jason Beaird December 14th at 12:48 pm

   Thanks for posting this Rob. I love reading other people’s Photoshop processes. @Ian: It just takes tinkering. The more you use PS, the more you come across wacky ways of creating unique visual effects.

3. Harold December 14th at 2:01 pm

   Thanks for this, now I have to resist the urge to use this all over the place, thanks for the temptation!

4. Julian Schrader December 15th at 9:36 am

   Thanks for the tip, looks great!

5. Alex Jones » Blog Archive » Recent Links: December 14 to December 17 December 17th at 4:01 am

   […] Light Threads in Photoshop […]

6. Make It Up As You Go » Blog Archive » Light Threads In Photoshop January 28th at 9:04 pm

   […] Rob Goodlatte displays how to create a very cool light thread effect in Photoshop. Not only is it stunning, but it’s very simple to replicate. (via Chris Glass) […]

7. Product Promo: Earth February 5th at 10:06 pm

   […] a tip from Alex I read the Light Threads in Photoshop tutorial, but I’m still missing that glowy radiance…need to play more. art, […]

8. Carly April 12th at 4:43 pm

   This is gorgeous!

 

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