Photoshop Tutorial: How to Create Lightning

Create Lightning from Scratch Using Photoshop

With Photoshop, you can pretty much do almost anything.� In essence, you're playing god of the computer art world, creating and editing whatever suites your taste.� If you want to play Zeus, then here are the steps to create lightning by using the tools
 that were already programmed in Photoshop.

Step 1: Making Clouds
You can't have lightning unless you got clouds, same in Photoshop.� First, create a new layer and name it Lightning.� You can name it whatever you want, but Lightning seems to be the most logical in this case.� Second, make sure your foreground and background colors are set to default, black and white, respectively.� This can be done manually, or you can just press D.� This is the same for both PC and Mac.
Once the colors are set to default, go to the Filter menu at the top of the window and choose Render, then Clouds.

Step 2:� Make More Clouds
Now, one cloud won't just create lightning, it's pretty harmless.� Again, same in Photoshop.� This time, instead of rendering another cloud, go back to Filter, Render, and then Difference Clouds.� Once that is done, go to the Image menu at the top of the window and select Adjust, then Invert.� This should result in something that looks like lightning.

Step 3: Finishing Touches
To finish, double click on the empty area to the right of the layer name, and then pull in the upper-left slider.� You'll want to split the sliders by holding down the Option key for Mac users and the Alt key for PC users.� The right half of the slider should be moved all the way to the right edge.� Next, grab the left edge of the slider and start moving to the right until you are satisfied with the look of the lightning.� To have an idea of how far you need to move it to begin making it look like lightning, you're going to have to move the slider almost all the way to the right as well.

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this tutorial totally blows you suck at explaining things put pictures or somthing

Posted on 05/15/2008 at 4:05:07 PM

egg?

Posted on 08/27/2007 at 11:08:00 AM

i think it might just b the stormy bakground 4 the lightning gone a bit wrong

Posted on 09/21/2006 at 12:09:00 AM

dude this is lighting this is shit get a life.

Posted on 08/08/2006 at 4:08:00 PM

good Oh very good

Posted on 07/13/2006 at 12:07:00 AM

Suck my penis

Posted on 07/13/2006 at 12:07:00 AM

no is not that lightning you won't but i think is good you begin to make tuts just ceep trying then you make one every body loves;) go to it.

Posted on 07/06/2006 at 11:07:00 AM

DUDE >YOU SUCK

Posted on 06/07/2006 at 12:06:00 PM

I really wouldn't call this a lightning effect, because that makes the assumption that it resembles lightning from a weather storm, which it does not. This effect is better for a general electric effect that will be all-encompassing, like on an electrified sphere or used as a texture map for a 3D object. The best method I have come up for creating lightning is just painting it by hand (or tablet if you have one).

Posted on 06/06/2006 at 5:06:00 PM

duh

Posted on 11/10/2005 at 12:11:00 PM

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