Create Amazingly Real Lightning Effects

We've all seen how natural lightning looks in the sky. But can we generate anything close to that in our images? Photoshop lets you in a few simple steps

Thursday, January 03, 2008

We all dread the hazards associated with natural lightning-electrocution and wildfires, but incorporating it in your images sounds fascinating. More so, when you see it in movies, banners or posters. The scope for depicting it across multimedia is unlimited and is only be constrained by the extent of imagination.

However, when used it can truly translate a dull image to something more spectacular; as you can judge by the scenes used to depict space wars and other such fantasies. We can also use this technique to enhance the quality of images, especially rainy scenes and night visuals. A typical example would be horror movie posters, where you can find lightning effects of various hues. We use Photoshop filters, Gradient tool and some Layer adjustments to show how you can create a real-life lightning effect.

Unwanted clouds can be removed at select >Image >Adjustments >Levels. To generate the lightning effect, give input levels values 0, 4 and 255, and Output levels as 208 and 0	You have to change the background to a dark cloudy one, to induce a touch of reality to the image. For this, select >Filter >Render >Difference Clouds

The lightning effect so obtained is black & white. Make it colorful by applying a color tone. Use Levels or Curves for changing the color settings	Open a new Grayscale mode file. In the Tools box, change to black foreground and white background. Select the Gradient Tool and draw a rough line for creating a gradient background

Page(s)   1