Infotaxis Blog

This post is originally from September 17, 2007…

To make things like seen in my Photoshop CS3 icon’s background:

http://eyesofaraven.deviantart.com/art/Photoshop-CS3-Icon-65126343

1. Paint the background of wherever you want the effect black. If you want it in a portion of the document, make a selection in that portion.
2. Filter->Render->Lens Flare - You will do this multiple times, most likely. I like to use three. The highlights and brighter spots of the twirl come from this.
3. Filter->Pixelate->Mezzotint - I use “Short Lines”, any will work, depends on the size of the work however.
4. Filter->Blur->Radial Blur - Zoom, 100%, Best - center it wherever, if you want it like mine leave it centered in the middle.
5. Duplicate Layer (Ctrl+J) - This allows us to work on one and leave the other to show the twirl intertwine.
6. Filter->Distort->Twirl (on the new layer) - Play with the setting. It comes out nice no matter what, but I prefer milder twirls myself.
7. Layer Blend (Lighten) - You can try others, but with light-on-dark this is the one to go for (you could invert, do other things, flip parts of the image, duplicate more, play with it!).
8. Enjoy the pretty swirl effect. I typically will merge the two layers now and then Ctrl+U to color them.

Popularity: 3% [?]

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 8:03 pm and is filed under photoshop tutorial. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.