Use custom brushes in Photoshop to create energy and light effects

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Step 1

Create a new document in Photoshop. Here we will realize the custom abstract brush. The size is 2500×2500 pixels, which is the largest size for a Photoshop brush. Set “Grayscale” as color mode and 300 pixels/inch for the resolution.

Step 2

Let’s start from a black circle. Use the Ellipse Tool (U) to draw it (hold down shift to maintain constant proportions).

Step 3

Right-click on the circle layer (in the layers palette) and select “Blending options”. The first thing to do is to reduce fill opacity to 0%.

Then add an inner shadow with no distance and size around 150px. The aim of this step is to give depth to the circle, so it starts looking like a sphere.

Step 4

Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and enter a radius around 2 px.

Step 5

Add a layer mask, grab a large soft black brush with hardness 0%, and remove the top-left area of the sphere.

Step 6

Duplicate the layer a couple of times to make the bottom-right area darker.

Create a new layer and move it below the circles ones. Grab a large soft black brush and click once over the center. Then reduce the opacity to around 20%. I had the impression the center of the circle was too light, so in this way we’ve added a subtle fill color. At this point you can select all the circle layers from the layers window and group them (ctrl+G).

Step 7

Now we can fill the area inside the energy sphere with abstract effects. The first tool we will use is the wave filter. Create a new layer – above the circles group – and fill it with black using the Paint Bucket tool.

Grab a soft white brush and make a spot in the center:

Step 8

Go to Filter>Distort>Wave. Just play with the options to distort the white circle. Don’t worry about the black area, we will remove it later.

After applied the filter the first time, press ctrl+F a couple of time to apply the same filter again.

Step 9

Press ctrl+I to invert image colors, and set the layer blend mode to multiply to eliminate white areas.

Step 10

As we made with the circle at the beginning, add a layer mask and use a large soft brush to remove some areas of the abstract effect.

Step 11

Repeat the same technique to add more of these effects.

Step 12

We can now put in some smoke effects. Create a new layer, grab the Lasso tool (L), set feather to 30px and make a selection as shown below:

Make sure to have white and black as foreground and background color and go to Filter>Render>Clouds. Then press ctrl+D to deselect.

Press ctrl+L to open the levels window and increase contrasts by moving the white and gray arrows a bit to the left:

Set the layer to multiply and again use a mask to remove some areas:

Step 13

You can add other smoke effects using the same method. Once satisfied with the result, group all the layers and title the group “inside”.

Here is my result:

Step 14

We are going to create some floating spots. To do it, we will use some brushes options (well explained in this tutorial: Playing with custom brushes to create magical scenes). Create a new layer, set black as foreground color and grab a round brush of around 25px (hardness 100%). Open the brushes window (Window>Brushes) and enter the following settings:

Step 15

Now that all brushes’ options are correctly set up, just paint over the canvas.

To give the sensation of movement, apply the Radial blur (Filter>Blur>Radial blur) with a 2px amount.

Step 16

The last details we can add are some lightnings. To create lightning brushes is relatively simple. You need to start from a shot. This photo downloaded from stock.xchng is perfect:

Open the image in you main Photoshop document, then press ctrl+I to invert the colors and set the layer blend mode to multiply. Press ctrl+L to open the levels window and move the white arrow to the left until the lightning is completely isolated.

Step 17

With this technique, you can extract and add several lightnings, re-size (ctrl+T) and combine them.

The brush is now ready to be saved:

Go to Edit>Define Brush Preset… and title it as you prefer.

Step 18

Now that the brush is complete, you can use it to embellish your works. Below is an unfinished composition I was working on. Remember that light effects work better on dark backgrounds.

Step 19

Create a new layer, select the new brush from the brush library and click once over the canvas. Don’t worry about the position, you can move the brush at any time since we’ve created it on a separate layer.