Design Tutorials

By Mark Dunkley
Why follow the tutorial? To make a easy and amazing blast effect.

Step 1:

Create a new document any size you like. I am going to use 800x600. Ensure you have black as your foreground and white as your background (Press D to make sure it is). Now from your tools window you want to select the Gradient Tool. Right click on the Paint Bucket Tool to bring up the menu if the Gradient Tool is not there.

Now that you have the Gradient Tool selected, you need to edit it's options. The options are just above the tool window and below the File-Edit-Image etc tool bar. Select Reflected Gradient and set mode to Difference.


Go to your blank document and hold you left mouse button down. Now drag it over to either the left or right. A neat little gradient should have appeared.


Step 2:
Repeat step 1 about 25-40 times, until you have something like I have below. Try to keep you lines relatively vertical (try and angle some).


Step 3:
Select your layer with the blast in it and make 4 duplicates. To duplicate your layer, right click on the layer and select Duplicate Layer. Or just press Crtl-J when you have the blast layer selected.

Do the following:

To the 4th duplicated layer (highest one): Set blending mode to overlay.

To the 3rd duplicated layer: Go to Edit->Transform->Flip Vertical (The Edit menu is highlighted in the step 3 example image) and then Edit->Transform->Flip Horizontal. Set blend mode to Linear Dodge and opacity to 50% this can be edited later if needed.

To the 2nd duplicated layer: Edit->Transform->Flip Horizontal and set blend mode to Overlay.

To the 1st duplicated layer: Go Filer->Stylize->Find Edges.


Step 4:
Now we are going to change the colour of each layer. To do this select any layer and then hold down Crtl-U (or Image->Adjustments->Hue/Saturation). Make sure you checked the Colourized box. Now experiment with sliders to change the colour. Do this to every layer (including original).


Step 5:
Grab your smudge tool from your tools window (right click on the blur icon if needed). Set your brush size to about 20px. Now go through each layer and smudge the edges of the blast. To apply a smudge click and hold the left mouse button. You will notice that it will have little effect on the overlayed layers but that one layer with a linear dodge will be easier to smudge (consider raising the opacity of this layer if needed).

To finish this blast off I added a new layer. Set the blend mode to overlay and used a regular paint brush and streaked colours of orange and red down the blast.

I also added a 200px spray paint blob with the brush tool to add to the bottom of the blast.



DONE!

If your blast didn't turn out quite like mine, try duplicating different layers and playing around with blend modes. You can get really creative with this blast so keep experimenting!