Making Lightning in Photoshop

1. Create a new 165x165 pixel document with a background contents of 'transparent', and name it Glow Waves. Now press D and then X. Now white should appear as the foreground color, however we want the foreground color to be gray. So select a gray from the swatches, I chose 50% gray, which is [R: 149, G: 149, B: 149]. Now select the gradient tool and at the top of the screen select linear gradient. Then click at the bottom of your document, and drag till it's at the to, then release.

2. Next, add difference clouds. You should get a horizontal line like the left. You can always undo (Ctrl-Z) and apply the filter again (Ctrl-F). Then invert the image.

3. Now adjust your levels, with the settings as follows.

The only setting that is flexible is the 130, depending on how much clouds you want around your lightning, you can make that higher or lower. Now rotate the canvas 90° clockwise (or counterclockwise). Now adjust the hue/saturation, check the box that says 'colorize' and drag your Hue and Saturation sliders to get your color, leave the Lightness color alone.