Hey Folks!
In this tut i'll show you how to make pretty realistic sunbeams in Photoshop rather than fiddling with volumetrics in your 3D app!
First you'll need an image with a bright background, including a main source of light (e.g. the sun).
Note: If there are other bright spots like strong specularities or engine glows they will show (unwanted) streaks too. You can see this in the last two images of this tut when you check the debris at the lower right. The bright streak looks pretty wrong, doesn't it? Thus, for best results just use an image of the plain background with black masked out objects!
Duplicate that layer. This will be the layer which makes up the sunbeams so you might want to name it such.
Next go Filters>Blur>Radial Blur...
You'll have to put the 'Blur Center' into the sun. I always do this by trial and error using the following settings and undo/move center/redo until i'm satisfied (is there a better way?!
)
Once you found the center, undo again and use the following settings to finally create the streaks:
In order to get rid of the noise artifacts apply the filter again with the same settings beside 'Amount' which you change to 50.
Now you should see something like that:
As already indicated switch to the move tool (V) and drag the pivot point into the sun (make sure you have selected 'Show Transform Controls' in the bar at the top if you don't see it). Now scale the layer by 120%. It's important that you do this by entering the values into the bar at the top rather than doing it with your mouse. Otherwise it won't be scaled in respect to the pivot point!
Now you have several possibilities to blend that layer into your image whereas all have advantages and disadvantages. Here are two possibilities:
Using blend mode 'Normal' has the disadvantage that the image tends to get washed out when the opacity gets too high, 'Screen' or 'Linear Dodge' brighten the image and thus tend to overexpose the image if it's already pretty bright. Also 'Overlay' and 'Soft Light' are worth a try. In the long run it always depends of the image. Play around!
Lastly one word of a warning: Please, for the sake of visual delight, keep the effect subtle. Less is more here!
That's it. I hope you liked the tut and found it easy to follow. If you have questions go ahead! :thumb:
And if anyone knows a better way to find the Blur Center of the Radial Blur dialog i'm all ears!!
Regards Roman
Posts
(good choice of subject too )
great tut!
and like Comco says, it may not work for every image
but I think the image you apply the blur to should be black and white and then screened on top, you'll need to put a little bit of extra work in to create a specific black and white matte for the blurring, but it'll still be quicker than rendering the volumetrics
is that a homeworld ship in the image btw?
Regards Roman
The Radial Blur filter defaults to the centre of the image. So, the solution is to make that the centre of the image using the crop tool. Using the crop tool, select the whole image (click-drag across the whole thing) then extend the crop area by dragging the corner points until it's suitably big. Next you move the crop template (which has a handy marker in the centre) so that the centre is over the light source.
Apply filters, crop the image back to original size and there you have it.
Regards Roman
Please don't hesitate to let me know if there arise any problems or questions regarding the tutorial (or anything else ).
Regards Roman