Energy Effect

by Tixy on September 21, 2010
Post image for Really Cool Energy Effect

Program: Photoshop
Difficulty: Beginner
CompletionTime: 7-15 minutes

In this tutorial you will learn a really simple way of creating energy swirls in just few steps. It is very interesting tutorial, so let’s get started!



Final image

Step 1: Create a new document 600 x 400 px (or any size you want) and fill it with black color. Now press D to reset colors, and than go to Filter/Render/Clouds.

Step 2: Go to Filter/Pixelate/Mezzotint and set Type to Short Strokes.

Step 3: Now go to Filter/Blur/Radial blur, and set Amount to 90, Blur Method to Zoom and Quality to Best. Do this twice and you will get something like this:

Step 4: Go to Filter/Distort/Twirl and set an angle to +130.

Step 5: It looks interesting so far, but we can make it look better. Press Ctrl+J (to duplicate layer), and repeat Filter/Distort/Twirl (on a new layer), this time with the angle set to -190. Change the layer’s blending mode to Lighten (right click on new layer, and press blending options, when new window pop up in the top you will see blending mode), and your picture will look like this:

Step 6: It is time to add a little color. While your top layer is active, choose Image/Adjustments/Hue/Saturation and set Hue to 0, Saturation to +35, Lightness to 0 and Colorize to Checked.

Step 7: Now repeat step 6, but this time on the background layer. Click on your bottom layer, and than go to Image/Adjustments/Hue/Saturation and set Hue to +235, Saturation to +75, Lightness to -5 and Colorize to Checked.

Step 8: At the end go to Layer/Flatten Image. After that go to Filter/Sharpen/Unsharp Mask and set Amount to 115%, Radius to 1px and Threshold to 0. And that is it, feel free to experiment with all of your settings, and get new and interesting effects. My final image looks like this:

Congratulations, you’re done!