Abstract Light

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This tutorial will show you how to make a wonderful lighting effect from scratch

Step 1: Create a new document with any size you like, but big enough. Go to Edit>Fill and fill your document with black then go to Filter>Render>Lens Flare and use the settings below to create a lighting source

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Step 2: Next go to Filter>Stylize>Wind and use the settings below:

 

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Notice that we chose "From the Right" direction.

Step 3: Repeat step 2 but this time we select "From the Left" direction. Now we have:

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Step 4: Go to Filter>Distort>Wave and use these values to make our light curve:

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Step 5: Press Ctrl-J to duplicate your current layer then go to Filter>Distort>Twirl and use the settings below:

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Step 6: Press Ctrl-J to duplicate your current layer and change the blending mode of this layer to Overlay to emphasize contrastive areas of the underneath layer by applying highlights and shadows of the current layer to it.

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Step 7: Press Ctrl-J twice to make it more contrastive, like this:

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Step 8: We will make some more "curves" by using the Twirl tool (Filter>Distort>Twirl)

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Step 9: Press Ctrl-J several times to make our new curve clearer. Here is the process

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Step 10: Press Ctrl-Shift-Alt-E to merge all visible layers and putting them into a layer on the top and change the blending mode of this layer to Screen to make the black areas disappear

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 You can try to create some more "lighting" by this method! Hope you enjoy this tutorial!