Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show you how to create the look of beautiful sunbeams or sunrays piercing through a forest.
This is an update of a tutorial I did a few years ago on an earlier version of Photoshop.
I provided this forest background that you can download, so you can follow along.
Its link is located in my video's description or project files below.
It Width is 1920 pixels, it's Height is 1280 pixels and its Resolution is 72 pixels per inch.
If you're using a different photo, make sure its resolution is also 72 pixels per inch
to ensure that your result will look similar to mine.
Make a copy of the background by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + J.
We'll use this copy to separate the sky from the land.
For this example, go to Select and Color Range.
Select "Sample Colors".
Check "Localized Color Clusters", which obtains a cleaner, more precise selection.
Keep the "Fuzziness" at approximately 80.
A higher amount selects more colors, While a lower amount selects fewer colors.
The Range slider fine-tunes the areas of your selection.
I'll keep it at 100%.
Click on the sky to select it.
To include more of the sky, press and hold Shift each time you click on more spots of
the sky until you can see all of the sky in the Preview window.
Then, click OK.
Press"Q" on your keyboard to see your selection as quick mask.
Next, we'll paint out unwanted areas.
Open your Pencil Tool and Pencil Picker.
Make the Size: 100 pixels, the Hardness: 100% and the Opacity: 100%.
Brush over areas of the quick mask that aren't part of the sky and aren't completely opaque.
When you're done, revert it into a selection.
Click the New Layer icon to make a new layer.
We'll fill the selection with white.
To do this, press Shift + the F5 key at the top of your keyboard to open the Fill window.
Open the "Contents" list and click "White".
To deselect it, press Ctrl or Cmd + D. Since we now have the shapes that make up the sky
on a separate layer, we can trash Layer 1.
Make it active and press the "Delete" key on your keyboard or drag it into the Trash.
Name it, "Rays".
We'll convert it into a Smart Object, so we can modify it non-destructively and adjust
the effects that we'll be adding to it at any time.
To do this, click the icon at the upper, right and click "Convert to Smart Object.
Go to Filter, Blur and Radial Blur.
Make the Amount 100, the Blur Method: Zoom and the Quality: Best.
Drag the center of the cross hair to a position that's relative to your photo from where you'd
like the source of the sunrays to emanate.
For this example, I want the sunrays to emanate near the top center of the photo, so I'll
place the crosshair point at that position in the Preview window.
Double-click on an empty area of the layer to open its Layer Style window.
Click "Outer Glow" and the color box.
In the hexadecimal field, type in F8FF8D.
Make the Blend Mode: Screen and the Opacity: 75%.
The Technique is Softer, the Spread is 0%, the Size is 1 pixel and the Range is 50%.
Change the Blend Mode to "Soft Light" and make a copy of the layer.
We're going to make the sunrays of the copy larger, but first,
let's zoom out a bit to give us a bit more room.
Press Ctrl or Cmd and the minus key on your keyboard once or twice.
Press Ctrl or Cmd + T to open your Transform Tool.
If you see this message, it's just letting us know that the outer glow effect will be
temporarily turned off while we use the transform Tool.
Just click OK or press Enter or Return.
Go to the center of the Transform's bounding box where you'll see a small icon called the "Reference Point".
Drag it to the center of your sunrays.
Go to a corner and when you see a diagonal, double-arrow,
press and hold Alt or Option + Shift as you drag it out approximately this much.
Notice the Bounding Box got larger from the center of the Reference Point.
To accept it, press Enter or Return.
Zoom back in by pressing Ctrl or Cmd and the "Plus" key on your keyboard once or twice.
Go to Filter, Blur and Gaussian Blur.
Blur it 50 pixels.
Make the original "Rays" layer active and again, go to FIlter, Blur and Gaussian Blur.
This time, blur it 5 pixels.
Change its Blend Mode to "Soft Light".
Next, we'll add the sun.
Make the top layer active and click the New layer icon to make a new layer above it.
To position the sun more accurately, we'll make a temporary composite snapshot of the image.
To do this, press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E on Windows or Cmd + Shift + Option + E on a Mac.
Go to Filter, Render and "Lens Flare".
The Brightness is 100% and Lens Type is "50-300mm Zoom".
Drag the flare to the center of the sunrays.
Then, click OK.
Now that we have its position, we can delete the composite snapshot.
Make a new layer and we'll it with black.
Open the Fill window and click "Black".
Change its Blend Mode to "Screen" and press Ctrl or Cmd + F to repeat your last filter,
which was "Lens Flare". Photoshop remembers the exact position and settings that we chose.
Lastly, we'll adjust the color of the light of the sun to match the radial light that's
filtering through the trees.
Click the Adjustment Layer icon and click, "Hue/Saturation".
Since we want the adjustment layer to affect just the lens flare and not any of the layers
under the lens flare, we'll need to make the adjustment layer into a clipping mask.
To do this, either click the Clipping mask icon or press Ctrl + Alt + G on WIndows or
Cmd + Option + G on a Mac.
Check "Colorize" and for the Hue, type in 37 and 44 for the Saturation.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
Thanks for watching!