Ray Effect
Written by Ray Silcox   
Sunday, 01 October 2006
Ray Effect
Ever wondered how some paintings have an extra glow coming out of them. Well this is the trick designers use to achieve it.

- Click here to see the video version of this tutorial.

- Open a new 500 x 500 PSD document.

- Go to Layer -> New -> Layer, click ok to make a new layer.

- Fill the new layer with mid-dark-green color. (#1B6501).

- Paste this sample image over it to work with.

alt

- Press CTRL + T to enter the free transform mood, now turn the guitar a bit, and make it smaller like below:

alt

- Now press and hold CTRL, and click on your guitar layer to select the guitar. (Note if you are using CS2 9.0, then you have press CTRL and click on the little thumbnail of the layer you are trying to select, if you are unsure which thumbnail I am talking about then look below).

alt

- Go to Layer -> New -> Layer, and click ok to make a new layer.

- Fill the new layer with white color. (#FFFFFF).

- So far it should like below:

alt

- Press CTRL + D to deselect the selection.

- Now grab the smudge tool (alt) and make it look like its spreading like below:

alt

- Go to Filter -> Blur -> Radial Blur, apply the following changes and click ok:

alt

- Now click on your original guitar layer, and drag it over the layer where you just applied the Radial Blur effect.

- So, your layer order should look like:

alt

- And the final image would look like:

alt