Part 2 of our amazing light effect tutorial!
Create a new layer above the 3D render and the shapes, but below the model’s layer. Change the blend mode to Screen and, using a big soft brush, make a few strokes with different colours. If the colour is too strong or too bright, use a darker tone.
Add more abstract lights and shapes by downloading a brush pack, preferably an abstract one. You can find them online for free, from various different websites. Use white when you paint and try to place them so that they follow the main lines of the subjects.
Sparks stock images are other great resources, and they can also be found online. Here, we’ve placed one over the model’s left hand. Change the blend mode of the layer to Screen and create a layer mask. Mask the sparks are don’t fit; in this case above the hand. To completely remove the black background, increase the shadows using a Curves adjustment.
Including some smoke coming out of the guitar here will add more drama to the image. Stock images and brushes are great for this; use a layer mask to blend edges.
Use brushes to add more details. Experiment with various different tones and shapes, and build up a unique collage of different brushes/sizes when you paint.
Add sparkles, either painted on, with a brush or via stock, scattered across the image. Again use different sparkles to avoid repeated shapes.
Make a slight change to the tones of the image by using a Colour Balance adjustment layer. For this particular image only the midtones have been modified to add more cyan and blue. The saturation of the colours has also been increased using a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.
Select the top layer in the palette and press Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+Alt/Opt+E to make a stamp. This will create a new merged layer. You can also do this by selecting the entire canvas and, from the Edit menu, choose Copy Merged and then Paste.
With the new layer selected, go to Image>Adjustments>Variations. Make sure the Midtones channel is selected, click once on More Cyan and then OK. After aplying the adjustment, set the layer’s blend mode to Overlay and Opacity to 30%.
Finally use a lens flare, or a big, soft, white brush on a Screen layer, 20% Opacity. That’s it! Experiment with extra effects or sit back and enjoy your finished artwork!