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70 Tutorials For Learning And Mastering Light Effects In Photoshop

This compilation offers a diverse selection of tutorials, each designed to help you master a different type of lighting effect in Photoshop. Whether you’re a novice or a seasoned guru of Photoshop, there are tutorials here that can teach you new tips and tricks to add to your arsenal. From basic lighting effects to more advanced techniques, this collection has something for everyone. And because it’s a bookmark-worthy resource, you can come back to it again and again for future reference. We hope you enjoy exploring all the possibilities that this collection has to offer!

1. Create a Glowing Effect Scene in Photoshop

glowing

This tutorial will teach you how to come up a cool glowing effects on your artworks.

2. Electrifying Energy Beamsrock-star

Here’s a great effect that will bring some energy to your subject. We’ll be wrapping this singer’s arm with a glowing beam of light, adding sparkles, and adjusting the colors to make it all seem magical.

3. Space Lighting Effects in 10 Steps – Photoshop Tutorial

space-lighting

Here’s a great effect that will bring some energy to your subject. We’ll be wrapping this singer’s arm with a glowing beam of light, adding sparkles, and adjusting the colors to make it all seem magical.

4. Drawing an Abstract Lightbulblight-bulb

in this tutorial It will cover a couple of different photoshop techniques.

5. Creating Energy Spheres in Photoshopboy-lighting

For this tutorial you’ll need a photo that you want to manipulate and some special brush sets.

6. Amazing Photoshop light effect in 10 Stepsbuy-me-a-coffie

A great tutorial on how to create magical sparkles using  Photoshop brushes.

7. Seriously Cool Photoshop Explosion Effectexplostion

A great tutorial on how to create magical sparkles using  Photoshop brushes.Explosions are cool. Seriously cool. So when I received some e-mails asking about how to create a break-apart, explosion effect, I knew it’d be worth making a tutorial on. Read on to find out how to break apart a body, then add some awesome lighting and glow, and nopattern style, to finish the image o

8. Adding Flames and Effects to Make an Image with Impact

light-snow-board

Instead of riding snow, this boarder is flying through flames. In this tutorial, we’ll create fire and smoke without using any photos. You’ll learn how to combine both to create a flaming, dynamic image that jumps right at you.

9. Creating Colorful Disco Lines Effectcolorful-dico-lines

This simple tutorial will show how we can create professional-looking colored lines with the usage of Photoshop Brushes and Blend Modes. It’s an interesting find for me when I was doing random experiments with Photoshop.

10. Digital Bokeh Effectbokeh

It will show you how to create a digital bokeh effect, but this time in Photoshop. The process is very easy and we will be using the super powerful Brush Engine, one of the coolest things in Photoshop.

11. Advanced Glow Effectsadavmcd-glow

In this tutorial, we’re going to create some really sharp-looking glow effects using a combination of layer styles, the Pen Tool and Color Blending. The end effect is quite stunning and hopefully you’ll pick up some tips you didn’t know before.

12. Design a Coldplay/Apple Inspired Portrait in Photoshop

cold-play

This tutorial will show you how to create a portrait based on the style of the latest Coldplay / Apple Ad featuring “Viva la Vida” from Coldplay.

13. Create a Space Explosion From Scratch in Photoshop

space

If you’ve ever wanted to create a space explosion in Photoshop, then we have the tutorial for you. With the techniques learned in this tutorial, you can create explosions as seen in a Sci-Fi television series. Let’s learn how to make this effect from scratch.

14. How to create 3D abstract circles in Photoshop CS4

circle-lights

You will create abstract circles in real 3D. To complete this tutorial you need Photoshop CS4 (…), a good graphic card and 5 minutes.

15. Create a Layered Glowing Text Effectglass-affect

In this tutorial, you will create this effect using very basic Photoshop tools and layering effects. This tutorial is simple enough for a beginner to understand, but I should warn you that in this tutorial there ends up being over 60 active text layers, which will require a heavy use of your computer’s memory. Let’s jump into this tutorial and layer some glowing text.

16. Design a Vibrant Blackberry Inspired Ad in Photoshop

black-berry

The Blackberry Loves U2 TV promo features some awesome, bright and vibrant lighting effects. Let’s take a look at recreating the style to produce a Blackberry inspired design of our own.

17. Design a Vista Styled Wallpaperlighting-turorial

Today you’ll create a wallpaper in Vista style. A black background will be filled with stylish gradients decorated with blue and green abstract curved shapes. The techniques used in this tutorial are scalable. It’s easy to turn the final design into different sizes to fit various monitors.

18. Beijing 2008 Logo Light Painting in Photoshoplight-painting

In this tutorial It will show you how to create a nice light painiting effect for texts and logos. You will be able to design nice wallpapers and images using this technique and even different light effects. Also, celebrating the Olympic Games we will use its logo for the example.

19. Energize Your Graphics with Abstract Energy Lines

energy

This tutorial, will show you how to create some energetic lines you can use to create more lively digital creations. Effects such as this are great for enhancing abstract compositions!

20. Luminescent Linesluminsent-line

This tutorial will mainly explore the brush engine and you will also learn how to create custom brushes and use them effectively, combined with some interesting layer styles.

21. Create a Glowing Light Painting Effectlight-men

A few weeks ago a friend of mine had published an article on my blog about Light painting. I was really impressed by all the effects these guys can create taking photos with long exposures. Then I thought it would be a nice idea to do that in Photoshop. So in this tutorial I will show you an easy, and very fast way, to create a light painting in Photoshop.

22. Fire tutorialcrushed

This tutorial will teach you how to create creative and stylish fire lines in 10 easy steps!

23. Really cool Eclipse Effect in Photoshopeclipse

In this tutorial It will show you how to create the Abduzeedo’s footer. Some of the techniques I used here I took from other tutorials and also from another tutorial I wrote some time ago for PSDtuts Mix Cool Retro Curves Into Your Photographs. Besides, the design is inspired by the amazing work of James White, so I highly recommend you to check his work out.

24. How to Make a Stylish Glowing Box in Photoshopglowing-box

In this Adobe Photoshop graphic design tutorial, we are going to create a magical glow effect coming from a box in Photoshop. This is a pretty simple effect that looks great and can easily be adapted for use in other ways.

25. Colorful Glowing Text Effect in Photoshoptutorial-9

After seeing some recent Type work by Vicenç Fontanet (or, Drasik), in his recent project for “Miniblack“, I just had to give the effect a shot myself in Photoshop. It’s a wondeful little style that could easily be integrated into any dark graphic design where some upbeat text is needed.

26. Expressive lighting effectslight-sparlkes

Lighting effects are an effective way to add a detailed illustrative touch to a photo. Justin Maller demonstrates how to go about combining several lighting techniques.

27. Lighting Shutter Text Effect Tutorialweb-design-blog

Web Design Blog teaches you how to create this beautiful slow shutter text effect.

28. Super Fast – Speed Lighting Effectsuper-fast

Take an image of a fireworks display and turn it into an intense sensation of speed. Manipulate natural lighting to fill a motion filled scene. Use masks to blend the effect over a car image to make the car appear to be in motion. This tutorial shows you exactly what to do. Let’s get moving.

29. How to Create Intense Light Streaks in Photoshoplight-can

A great lighting tutorial useing the pen tool.

30. End of the World Photo Manipulationend-of-world

A great photo manipulation tutorial which you use some amazing lighting effects.

31. Electrifying Glow Album Art light-album-cover

In this tutorial we will use the pen tool, paths brushes and brush dynamics along with a neat little trick using thresholds to create a cool album cover look.

32. Flying Girl in Photoshopdancer-lighting

In this tutorial you will use some stock photos and mix them together to create a nice effect. It was inspired by a chapter of the depthCORE collective called NOIR.

33. Make an Apple Coldplay Style Ad in Photoshoplight-blast

In this tutorial, I will show you how to create a very similar effect to that used in the Apple Coldplay Video Ad. If you have done the Sparkling Hot Girl tutorial in Photoshop, you will find it similar in some steps of this tutorial.

34. Striking Text Effect Using Glows and Blends2-light

In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to create the image above using a combination of glows and blends in 7 steps. All the files for this tutorial are at the bottom of this post.

35. NoPattern “Jumper” Effectpsdtuts-lights-sparkles

One of the coolest digital artists around is Chuck Anderson, a.k.a. NoPattern. After seeing a recent Psdtuts+ reader request, I decided to show you how to create a light effect similar to NoPattern’s Jumper Poster.

36. How to create neon glowneon

In our Photoshop Tutorial, you will create a Glowing Neon Girl from scratch. Throughout this tutorial, you will simply learn how to make some cool Glowing Effects in Photoshop.

37. Ahhh alien Invastionalien-invasation

Time again to talk about aliens! No, not the illegal kind. The green kind! What better way to kickoff the summer spirit than with explosions, death rays, and a little stormy weather – thanks to our friend, Photoshop.

38. A Cool Lighting Effect In Photoshopnew-apple-logo

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create that effect we saw on the screen at the Macworld San Francisco. It’s basically some lighting effects with blurs and blend modes, but the effect is awesome.

39. Iron Man View Interface Effect in Photoshopironman

So in this tutorial It will show you how to create the Iron Man screen interface, I don’t even know if I can call it that way :). We will use Illustrator to create some vectors and Photoshop to put everything together.

40. Create a Dramatic Car Speeding Scenecar-lighting

An awesome Photoshop tutorial on how to create a speeding car design.

41. Give a Photo a Complete Glamour Makeover With Stunning Light and 3D Effectsglamour-make-over

Have you ever wanted to see what you would look like after a complete makeover? Today, I’m going to show you how to transform a regular, every day photo into a real glamour shot. In this tutorial, you will learn how to retouch a model’s face and subtly manipulate her hair. In addition, we will enhance the canvas by adding attractive lighting and 3D effects.

42. Displacement effectslight-girl

In this tutorial you will learn how to use a variety of filters and techniques to produce an image in an experimental style. It’s a flowing work technique, and things will always change and blend into the image in different ways, so don’t expect to recreate the exact image I have created here.

43. Colorful Light Effect in Photoshopabstract-lighting

So in this tutorial It will show you how to create a super easy but at the same time beautiful light effect.

44. Splattered Photoshopman-triangle-lighting

It’s a little long at 25 mins but theres a lot of good little tips and tricks in it.
The tutorial is a follow on from my learn how to make a custom brush tutorial where you will now learn how to effectively use your custom brushes and create this stunning design. You can also use the same work flow on different images with similar effects.

45. Super Easy Neon Style in Photoshopneon-txt

In this tutorial I will show you how to create a nice light effect in Photoshop. We will use Layer Styles and Blend Modes to simulate a neon text effect.

46. Design a Space Inspired Iphone Advertiphone-lighting

Learn how to create amazing space age lighting effects as part of a sleek, professional Iphone advert.

47. Dodge Blend Mode for Light Effectslight-text

Color Dodge is one of the Blend Modes I use the most. It’s in my opinion the easiest and best way to create light effects, and, even though I have already written quite a few tutorials showing how to use it, I decided to write a quick tips all about this very useful blend mode.

48. Abstract Dust And Spray Effectabstract-dust

this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to create colorful abstract spray effect for use in your graphics. This has become quite a trendy technique recently, and can be accomplished fairly easily.

49. Easy Star Light in Photoshopeasy-light-star

So in this tutorial you will create a composition from scratch first in Illustrator where we will play with shapes and the Blend Tool. After that in Photoshop we will add the light effects and the pattern overlay.

50. Create a Fiery Face Explosionfire-smoke

Learn how to manipulate images of flame and smoke to create a glowing, intense facial explosion effect.

51. Lost in Space Typography in Photoshoplost-in-space

So in this tutorial It will show you how to create an easy and super quick text effect in Photoshop. you will play with Brushes, Blend Modes, basic filters like Blur and Liquify, and also text.

52. Create a Refreshing Beer Themed Poster Design in Photoshopwater-bottle

When you create a print advertisement, it’s important that all the elements of your composition are geared towards selling a product and promoting a brand. Today, we will demonstrate how to create a refreshing beer-themed poster design in Photoshop.

53. Create A Retro Cosmic Design in Photoshopcosmic-design

This tutorial will teach you how to recreate the Retro Cosmic designs made popular by James White of Signalnoise. All you need is a copy of Photoshop and some time on your hands. In this particular example we’re going to create a retro cosmic rainbow but the techniques explained can be used in combination with any shape and colour.

54. 3D Text On Fire3d-text-fire

This tutorial is going to be a little more advanced than the other ones I have done. It shouldn’t be a problem if you have been following along with our other tutorials or have a grasp of Photoshop. So lets begin.

55. Fantastic Disintegration Effect inspired by Watchmen in Photoshopwatch-men

In this tutorial I will show you how to create the disintegration effect using brushes and the blur filter. It’s really simple and you will be able to create nice designs using this sort of trendy style of effect.

56. How to Create a Hellacious Flaming Skull in Photoshopflaming-skull

In this tutorial, we’ll go through all the steps of creating a flaming skull in Photoshop. We’ll be using some images we shot ourself of flames, and a stock Designious vector skull to get us started. This tutorial covers some relatively simple steps and some clever photo manipulation techniques.

57. Amazing Video-Game Text Style in Photoshopgold-text-effect

It will show you how to create a text effect in Photoshop based on the DVNO clip by Justice and of course some 8 and 16 bits video game opening screens. We will play basically with some basic filters like Gaussian Blur, also with Blend Modes to the light effects.

58. Give a Car Photo Super Slick Lighting Effectslight-car

Learn how to combine photos and brush strokes to give a car photo slick dusky lighting effects.

59. Abduzeedo 2010 Light Effects in Photoshoplight-abduzeedo

So in this tutorial It will show you how to create that effect. It’s a sort of monitor/halftone effect mixed with glows and other light effects. We will play with Blend Modes and Blurs. The whole process is quite simple and it won’t take more than 20 minutes to achieve the same result.

60. How to Create a Retro Sci-Fi Computer Game Postergalactic-attack

Combine stock photos and design resources to create an awesome retro sci-fi themed game poster that takes inspiration from Atari games of the 80s. By mixing up bright and vibrant cosmic designs with old, distressed and grungey textures we’ll create a retro futuristic poster design for ‘Galactic Attack’.

61. Tutorial: Killer 3D Poster Design with 3DS Max & Photoshop

stand-up

Last week I posted some articles about typography and received quite a few emails asking me to create a tutorial on text effects. So I decided to play a bit with Photoshop to create a nice sort of 3D effect using a calligraphy font and a lot of Layer Styles. The effect is really simple and we will take a look at how to create patterns and light effects with Blend Modes.

62. Shiny Calligraphy Text Effect in Photoshopcaligrphy

Last week I posted some articles about typography and received quite a few emails asking me to create a tutorial on text effects. So I decided to play a bit with Photoshop to create a nice sort of 3D effect using a calligraphy font and a lot of Layer Styles. The effect is really simple and we will take a look at how to create patterns and light effects with Blend Modes.

63. Design a Beautiful Cosmic Space Scene in Photoshop

cosmic

Ever since I saw the recent Star Trek movie I’ve been itching to create a gorgeous sci-fi inspired cosmic space scene. I eventually found the time to do so and created a piece of artwork named ‘First Light’. Follow this step by step walkthrough of its creation in Photoshop, from the making of the planets, to the vibrant nebula and bright lens flares.

64. How to Create an Interplay of Abstract Light Streaks

abstract-light-sreaks

This tutorial is inspired by the work of the Lichfaktor collective. You should really take a look at their pictures, which are pure urban poetry. I basically wanted a simple way to create similar light effects without freezing my bones outside at night.

65. Create a Trendy Galactic Poster Design in Photoshop

chemical-imbalance

Galactic space scenes are a popular theme for digital art, they’re packed full of texture and vibrant colour, which are two ingredients of an awesome design! Using Photoshop’s blending modes along with a mix of textures and brushes, let’s get lost in space and create an abstract cosmos poster design.

66. Super Slick Dusky Lighting Effects in Photoshopsunset

One of the best sites around for desktops has to be Desktopography. I’ve been inspired by their amazing work, so today we are going to put together a sunset image mixing some vector shapes and dusky lighting effects to produce a slick image that would make a nice album cover for a chillout mix!

67. How to make a Typographic, Retro, Space Facetypography-lighting

n this tutorial, It will show you how to make a typographic face by using simple techniques. Using the Brush Tool and experimenting with light, you will get this amazing Typographic Space Face that looks like it’s created by letters and an amazing explosion.

68. Christmas wallpaper design in photoshopchristmas-wallpaper

another year is ending and nothing better than creating a Christmas desktop wallpaper using Photoshop to celebrate that right? Well, maybe not.

69. Create a Magical Golden Winged Bootlight-shoe

This is the final image that we’ll be creating in this tutorial. This tutorial was inspired by the awesome work of Barton Damer, whose work I suggest you check out.

70. Epic

epic

It’s funny how trends reappear through the years. The bright and shiny chrome text effect could be found everywhere in the 80s, then it disappeared altogether when people realised how hideous and gaudy it was. Recently though, this text styling seems to be making a comeback in the world of digital art as the 80s generation are implementing inspirations from their childhood into their designs and artworks. Follow this tutorial to recreate the epic metal text effect for yourself, making use of modern day digital design techniques in Photoshop.

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