PS Quick ‘n’ Dirty Lightning Tutorial
I’m not much of an artist, but I came up with a technique for cartoon Lightning that I thought turned out pretty good that doesn’t require a tablet (I used a mouse)
1) Using the Pen Tool, create a jagged path on a new layer, start outside of the canvas.
2) Select the color you want the lightning to be (I chose Cyan) Select the main thickness of the lightning with the brush tool. Once you are done right click the canvas click “Stroke Path” Make sure Simulate Pressure is selected.
3) Repeat Steps 1 and 2 with smaller thicknesses, following the main lightning branch and extending out at forks until you get the look you want.
4) Duplicate the layer at least two times. Select the top layer and Turn this layer white.
6) Go to the bottom layer and click Filter->Blur-> Gaussian Blur. Eyeball the glow you want to have. Repeat this for the second layer, but blur it less so.
7) on the White layer, blur it a bit as well, (I prefer 1.5-2 pixels)
I hope this tutorial helps out somebody! Once you get this down it takes about 3 minutes to do something like that.
