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Posted on 26/10/06 3:13:05 PM |
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james
Surreal Spoofer Posts: 1194 Reply  |
Electrical discharges
I would be pleased to learn how to produce Lightning and other Electrical discharge effects. Had no luck foraging. |
Posted on 26/10/06 4:55:37 PM |
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GKB
Magical Montagist Posts: 4025 Reply  |
Re: Electrical discharges
Hi James, All you have to do is buy Alien Skin Xenofex 2 and there you will find 'Electrify' and 'Lightning' as well as a few other plug in goodies  |
Posted on 26/10/06 10:56:18 PM |
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paul_2006
Guest Reply |
Re: Electrical discharges
Lightning on the cheap. 1) create a new blank image 2) Gradient fill from black to white diagonally from corner to corner 3) Filter->Render->Difference Clouds 4) Image->Adjustments->Invert 5) Image->Adjustments->Levels In the levels dialog box pull the left handle under the graph to the right until you see something that resembles lightning. Erase bits that don't look right. Then overlay that onto your base image using blending mode SCREEN and you should be done. You can colour it a bit to help. Adding several layers of lightning at different scales can help to make it look more real too. |
Posted on 27/10/06 03:16:31 AM |
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Pierre
Constructional Confabulator Posts: 637 Reply  |
Re: Electrical discharges
I like this cheap stuff...This one took about 3 minutes. It has 3 layers of Paul's cheap lightning.  _________________ |
Posted on 27/10/06 09:05:33 AM |
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GKB
Magical Montagist Posts: 4025 Reply |
Re: Electrical discharges
Paul 2006, Tried it. Like it! Gordon |
Posted on 27/10/06 8:16:47 PM |
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james
Surreal Spoofer Posts: 1194 Reply |
Re: Electrical discharges
Paul 2006 Received /tried /like it. Thank you. Colouring? |
Posted on 27/10/06 8:32:04 PM |
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james
Surreal Spoofer Posts: 1194 Reply |
Re: Electrical discharges
Just can't get the colouring bit. James. |
Posted on 28/10/06 11:00:51 AM |
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paul_2006
Guest Reply |
Re: Electrical discharges
Here is something I did in about 10 minutes. It is rubbish I know. (Knowing how to do something and being able to do it well are two completely different things  )
To colour the lightning slightly I just added a layer above the lightning and used brush to put some very crude blobs of red over the lightning. Changed the blobby layer blend mode to COLOUR and made a clipping mask so it only affected the lightning.  |
Posted on 29/10/06 5:53:47 PM |
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Babybiker
Shadow Spectaculator Posts: 151 Reply  |
Re: Electrical discharges
I used an action to create the lightning, wich worked on a very similar basis as detailed above, leaving light blue streaks on a black background. Then to change the colour, I used hue and saturation adjustments (as the lightning has a touch of blue in it, this made it easier) and then pasted it onto the image as a new layer, using Steve's Gunfire / "Blend If Grey" Tutorial on page 60, Third Ed. BB |
Posted on 30/10/06 08:23:57 AM |
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Steve Caplin
Administrator Posts: 7042 Reply  |
Re: Electrical discharges
Great technique! And a good collaborative effort, here. |
Posted on 30/10/06 2:45:10 PM |
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Babybiker
Shadow Spectaculator Posts: 151 Reply |
Re: Electrical discharges
James' question regarding coloured lightning had me intrigued - I have gone into the action I used to create lightning and looked at how it produced coloured lightning. Parts of it used channels, which seemed complicated and unnessacary, so using this as a basic starting point, and playing around with different settings, I have found a simple solution and some interesting effects- Start off with a colour to black gradient - really it can be any colour, as the final hue can be changed at the end, but if you know what colour lightning you want, choose that to make life easier. (a Colour to White gradient produces the inverse of the colour chosen- (Red=cyan, Blue=yellow, Green=pink etc)). Once the gradient has been applied hit "D" to return the Foreground / background to Black / White (this is important!). Apply Difference clouds, Invert and bring up the levels settings. Once the black slider has been adjusted to give a suitable black background, the grey slider can be adjusted to alter the amount of glow the lightning has (this can also be done in the second value box above the histogram.) a value of 0.1 will produce lightning with little or no glow, a higher value increases the glow. Now it is just a case of adjusting the colour of the lightning in H&S. Changing the Gradient settings at the beginning will have varying effects - eg "Spectrum" produces shorter straighter Red, Green & Blue Streaks. Try also using a different gradient setting rather than just "linear". "Radial" with a black/one colour gradient gives a ring of lighting (no real surprises there!) and angle will send lighting to a given point, based on the "centre" of the angle. This might be useful when trying to create lightning striking the top of a building or recreating Micheal Angelo Paintings etc. BB |
Posted on 30/10/06 3:15:21 PM |
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Babybiker
Shadow Spectaculator Posts: 151 Reply |
Re: Electrical discharges
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Posted on 30/10/06 8:05:32 PM |
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james
Surreal Spoofer Posts: 1194 Reply |
Re: Electrical discharges
Babybiker Followed instuctions, works a treat. Thank you. |
Posted on 29/12/06 4:47:09 PM |
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dave.cox
Marquee Master Posts: 518 Reply  |
Re: Electrical discharges
I really like this cheap lightning. Just a couple more steps and you can refine it to look more like the stuff GKB has. One more trip through the levels to further define and make the lines bolder, and then use the same technique that steve shows for neon lites and you have sharp lightning bolts. Use select > color range to pick the lightning bolt color. Use select > modify > expand to increase the selection size, say by about 5 pixels, and then select > modify > feather about 3 pixels. On a new layer fill the selection with the same color as your lightning bolt, and reduce the opacity to about 40%.  |