Rays of Light

After releasing my latest wallpaper devkit I received a bunch of requests from people, asking me to do a tutorial on how to create rays of light with Adobe Photoshop. Well here we go...

Draw gradient

In a first step open Photoshop and create a new document. If you intend to create a wallpaper you may already choose the respective dimensions. Fill the background layer with a subtle gradient like on the screenshot below.

Select gradient type

Now create a new layer and select the gradient tool from the tools palette. The context sensitive options palette now displays gradient specific settings. Click the gradient in order to open the gradient editor. Now select Noise as gradient type and click the "Randomize" button to get a balanced gradient (hue is not important). Make sure that it looks similar to the one shown in the screenshot below.

Draw angle gradient

Now we can draw a gradient on our newly created layer. Make sure that you've selected Angle Gradient in the options palette and draw a gradient that looks similar to the one below.

Desaturate

Now we just need to desaturate the layer via "Image - Adjustments - Desaturate" and set its blending mode either to Soft Light or Overlay. Voila - we are finished. Quite easy huh? :)