Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Particle Streak Effect!

1. Creating paths with the pen tool.

For the first step you will have to be familiar with the pen tool.

Now with the Pen Tool selected and setting the top options to Paths we will want to create the path in which this streak will follow, remember do this on the effect layer.

Particle Streak Effect! image 1

Notice how I'm starting from the bottom foot and will create a flow where it will end up on the other foot.

Particle Streak Effect! image 2

Here is my finished path, you can follow the same path as me or create your own path you would like to work with.

Particle Streak Effect! image 3

2. Select a brush and size.

Select the brush tool and open the brush menu, now the brush is what's going to turn into the glowing streak. Once you get the hang of you it can make any kind of streak you would like as long as you have the brush for it. For now lets select the solid 5px brush with a hardness of 100%.

Particle Streak Effect! image 4

3. Stroke path

After selecting your desired brush, click on the pen tool and hover over your path right click and choose Stroke Path, then make sure the option is set to your brush and click ok.

Particle Streak Effect! image 5

Your image should now look like this.

Particle Streak Effect! image 6

4. Creating the wrapping illusion

Select the layer1 layer which the image is on, and were going to copy parts of the image and paste it on top of the effect layer. The parts we copy are the parts we want to make it look like the streak wrapping in front and behind the object.

I choose the elliptical marquee tool and created a circle where I wanted to hide the streaks which is going to be behind the object. If you want to do it all at once like I did below after making a circle hold shift and make drag another circle.

Particle Streak Effect! image 7

Now paste what you copied over the effect layer and your image should like the one below, notice the effect is starting to come into place.

Particle Streak Effect! image 8

5. Effect layer style

Double click the effect layer to bring up the layer style option. Now here we can do whatever we want, so I'm going to go with the glowing effect. Go to color overlay and choose a color, it can be green, white… ect

I've chosen orange for the color.

Particle Streak Effect! image 9

Now click on the outer glow option and choose a color you want the streak to glow, I've chosen a dark orange and be sure to blend it with a Linear Dodge.

Particle Streak Effect! image 10

Your image should now look similar to the one below.

Particle Streak Effect! image 11

6. Adding particles to your streak

I find this the fun part, on the particle layer we are going to use a particle brush and draw the particles around the streaks. I used the one from Celestial Star - click here to download they have some excellent free brushes for Photoshop.

Particle Streak Effect! image 12

With the particle brush now set, choose a bright color for your particle, I've chosen a bright orange-yellow for my particle and simply click along the lines where the streaks are visible.

Particle Streak Effect! image 13

And were finished! I hope you enjoy this tutorial, if you have any questions, please comment below and I'll try to reply asap!

Particle Streak Effect! Tutorial: Final Result