Tutorial: Aurora Effect

[Posted 08/01/2009 at 12:01 AM | One Comment]

This awesome effect is seen in many places. If you have Vista, you have a screensaver that animates this same effect. If you read the news at MSNBC, they have it in their banner. This effect could be used for anything you want, but would look best in a banner with a black background. In this tutorial, I will show you how to many this extremely easy design – and you only need two layers!!

Step One

The first thing to do is open up photoshop, go to file > new and enter 2000 pixels for the witdh and 800 pixels for the height.

Step Two

In your first layer, get your bucket and fill it with black (#000000).

Step Three

Create a new layer buy click the new layer icon.
newlayer

Step Four

In the new layer, insert clouds by going to filter > render > clouds. Make sure you have white (#FFFFFF) for the background and black (#000000) for the foreground. (click picture to view full image)

Step Five

After that, in the same layer, add fiber by going to filter > render > fibers and enter the following information:

You will now have this:
(click picture to view full image)

Step Six

Now, add a motion blur by going to filter > blur > motion blur and use these settings.
mblur1

You will now have this:
(click picture to view full image)

Step Seven

You know want to add a Gradient Overlay. Go to layer > layer style > blending options. Click on gradient overlay and use the following:
grad

You will now have this:
(click picture to view full image)

Step Eight

Take your lasso tool . Make the feather at the top to 60.

From edge to edge, draw an odd shape with curves and what not like below.
(click picture to view full image)