In this Photoshop tutorial, I'm going to show you how to add light rays
to your photos in 5 easy steps! The first step is to create a new
Gradient Fill with grayscale noise. Let me show you how to do that. Go into the new fill or Adjustment Layer
icon and select the Gradient Fill from here, Make sure that you set your style to "Angle" and click on the gradient
to bring up the Gradient Editor. All you need to do is set the
Gradient Type to Noise and you'll get this pattern
that you see here and you can control
the Noise with these sliders. change the color mode to HSB: Hue, saturation, and brightness. And bring the Saturation
all the way to the left, so that you get a
black and white gradient. If you're unhappy with the result, you can click on the Randomize button
until you get something that looks good. You're basically trying to get something that looks like this. Something without a strong seam. This is looking very good. So I'll press OK and I'll press OK one more time. The second step is to hide the dark pixels on this layer to create
the illusion of light race. To do so, you can change the Blending Mode
on this Gradient Fill Layer to Screen. The screen Blending Mode hides dark
pixels and it keeps the bright ones. The third step is to place
the light rays into position. All you need to do is double-click
on the Gradient Layer Thumbnail, then click-and-drag over the image
to reposition the light rays. You can place them anywhere that you want, even outside of the canvas, but I'll place it on this
bright area behind her head. In this case, I really like the gradient, but in case you don't like your gradient,
you can adjust the angle to something else; And you can see how it rotates
to a different direction. But I'll keep mine at 90 degrees
because that looks pretty good. The fourth step is to
fine-tune the gradient. In this case, I'll show you two different techniques to help you enhance the gradient. First, you can go into the new
Adjustment Layer icon and create a Levels Adjustment Layer. Clip it to the layer below so that it only
affects a gradient fill in nothing else. And I can adjust the contrast
of that Gradient Fill, to adjust how
the light beams affect the image. This is totally subjective, of course, and the settings that you use depend
on the darkness of your gradient. Also remember that we're using the
Screen Blending Mode So making the layer darker will make it less visible and making
it brighter will make it more visible. So again, you may or may not
need to use this technique, but you may want
to use the second technique. Let me show you how to apply
a color to the light rays. Start by going into the new
Adjustment Layer icon and select the
Hue and Saturation Adjustment Layer clip it to the layer below as well. Check the Colorize checkbox
to apply a color. And from the Hue slider, just select an orange color like this one. And increase the saturation a bit. And this looks pretty good. The fifth and final step is to selectively
apply the light rays over the image. I don't want the light rays
covering the entire image and I'm going
to use a Layer Mask for that. But you need to be careful. There's something weird going on in Photoshop
with gradients and Layer Mask, and I'm going to show you
how to fix that issue. So make sure that you stick
around until the end. First, I'll scroll down to
my Gradient Fill Layer and I already have
a Layer Mask by default. If I press Ctrl I on Windows,
Command I on the Mac, I can invert that Layer Mask to make it completely black so that all the
pixels are hidden. And with the Brush Tool I can paint with white to selectively reveal
the light beams over my image. Now, I'm going to increase my brush size by tapping on the
right bracket key on the keyboard and I'll hold Shift and tap
on the left bracket key to reduce my Brush Hardness
so that I can paint with a soft brush. And when I paint over the canvas,
watch what happens. I get the light beam,
you can see the light beam there. But notice it as I paint the center of that light beam moves and that can be very confusing. Let me show you how to disable that. It's not as intuitive as you may think to disable the light beam
from moving as you paint, what you need to do is unlink
the Layer Mask from the layer and also the double-click
to the side of the layer to bring up the Layer Style window, and make sure that you
check Layer Mask Hydes effect. Once you check that box, notice at the center of the light beam
went back to where I had it originally. I'll press OK. Enable the Layer Mask. And when I paint, you'll notice now
that the light beams will stay in place. Next, I'll feel the Layer Mask with black. Black is my background color So I'll press Ctrl Backspace on windows,
Command Delete on the Mac to fill with my
background color you can paint with white over the Layer Mask to selectively bring back the light beams. And this is my result. Next, let me show you one final extra tip that may help you in some cases. Depending on the image that you're working
with, you may want to blur the light rays. Let me show you how to do that. You can right click on your layer, convert it to a Smart Object and go
into Filter Blur, Gaussian Blur. And by blurring the beams,
you can get a much more realistic effect. If you decide to try out this technique, feel free to share it on Instagram
with the hashtag #PTCVIDS. I would love to see what you came up with. My name is Jesus Ramirez. Thank you so much for watching. I'll talk to you again
in the next Photoshop tutorial!
