Aurora type effect with Photoshop

Well after my blog showcasing my re-creation of Leopards Aurora Borealis desktop, I got a lot of feedback and many of you want a tutorial on how I did it. Well you are in luck…I finally decided to put together a brief tutorial. I must warn you this is my first tutorial so bear with me hehe. Anyways here goes

Step 1. Find any image of a space scene, I found this one on the NASA site and loved the colours. I dont know NASA’s copyright rules but Im not using this photo for commercial purposes so it should be ok.

Step 2. Open a new document and make the background black. Now drag your space image into the document, it should appear in a new layer.

Step 3. Make sure you are on the space image layer and go Filter - Blur - Radial Blur , and make your settings like mine below.

Your image should now look like this:

Step 4. Duplicate that layer that you just made your radial blur on and set it to Screen, Opacity 60%. This will just make the light effect more intense. Your image should now look like this:

Step 5. Now to add some more colour streaks and highlights to our work. To do this first add a new layer. Take a smallish hard brush and just scibble in different colours like i have below. I chose these colours but you can use anything you like.

Step 6. Now making sure you are still on your scribble layer, go Filter-Blur-Motion Blur and make your settings as: Angle 90 degrees, Amount 484 .

Step 7. Take your blurred scribble and go Edit - Transform - Free Transform and rotate it to your liking and place it so it looks like more streams of light are coming out of the center. Set it to either Screen or Softlight , whichever looks best for you. Here is mine:

Step 8. Repeat step 7 but make your highlights different sizes and colours and try a few different blending modes. Basically just play around until you come up with something you like. Here is mine with a few more light streams added.

Step 9. Now just add a starfield and some text and your done

NOTE : ALL CREDITS FOR THE ORIGINAL TUTORIAL MAKER :)

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