Blinded by the Light – Create Energy Beams and Swirls in Photoshop

In what is planned to be a weekly feature, Photoshop LinkLove will scour the net for tutorials that are tied together by a common theme, and deserve props and recognition. If you have any ideas on a feature you’d like to see, or an external tutorial you especially enjoyed, why not request it?

This week’s feature is entitled Electric Paint. Glowing beams, fairy lighting effects, and magical particles are quickly becoming popular for the dynamic energy they add to an image. Head on after the break for a list of tutorials that will get you making plasma, creating swooping swirls, and illuminating the dark!

Advanced Glow – by PSDTuts
In this tutorial we’re going to create some really sharp looking glow effects using a combination of layer styles, the pen tool and colour blending. The end effect is quite stunning and hopefully you’ll pick up some tips you didn’t know before.
Plasma – by Lorelei Web
The requests for Fantasy Art tutorials are enormous, I still get emails and Pms from people asking to do more Fantasy Art tuts, so here is one more, called “Plasma” (Star, not the TV!) which I hope you’d enjoy.
Electrifying Energy Beams – by Luxa
Here’s a great effect that will bring some energy to your subject. We’ll be wrapping this singer’s arm with a glowing beam of light, adding sparkles, and adjusting the colors to make it all seem magical.
Neon Lights with Photoshop – by Darjan Panic
There are different ways of making neon lites with Photoshop. It’s really easy and fun to make them. So today’s post is a nice tutorial on how to make neon lights and how to use them in different ways to make nice effects.
Magic Lights – by Abduzeedo
This one is neat in that it uses modified text to create the effect as opposed to the pen tool. While the final effect looks pretty neat, this isn’t a tutorial for a beginner photoshopper as some steps are not fully explained. I encourage you to look at his updated tutorial which explains things a little better.
Magic – by Photoshop 7.0 Tutorials
If you have an older version of Photoshop, don’t despair! Here is a tutorial which outlines a method to make a glowing chalky-type swirl in Photoshop 7.0
Light Beam – by PhotonCube
This tutorial is not very hard at all and you should be able to make something like my beam if you follow the steps I took. Please remember that as you get better with photoshop its more and more up to you to decide what looks better or worse. The steps are not set in concrete! You may get a better beam by doing something I didn’t.
Creating Light Motion Trails & Glowing Sparks – by Veerle
A technique often used in advertising these days, is these glowing lines. They look like light motion trails. If you ever wondered how to create these kind of lines, here is how I do it…
This is probably my favourite of the lot :)
BONUS! : Abstract Shine Animation with Photoshop and ImageReady – by Elie El
Take your fantastical swirls to another level! This simple tutorial will teach you how to add in a wicked animated shine to your wisps of light. Try it out for a very cool final effect!

3 Responses to “Blinded by the Light – Create Energy Beams and Swirls in Photoshop”

  1. Geez..

    The amount of respect I got for Mr.Minty Ferret =D

    I love this site with a passion..

    Full of surprizes, not overload with stuff, recommending this site anywhere I go man…

  2. Hey thanks Gregor. I really appreciate that, and I’m glad to see you around so often, it must mean my site has been helpful! :) Let me know if there’s anything specific you want to see here and hey, I might be able to dig something up.

  3. Love the light beam reminds me of the underwater O2 advert! cool list

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