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Digital Starburst in PhotoShop
We've all seen those night-time photos, usually taken with a Cokin filter, where the city lights are rendered as a "Starburst". Here's how I created the same effect in PhotoShop using this photo taken from the top of the Wells Fargo building in downtown Phoenix.
1. First we switch to the Channel palette and duplicate the Red channel by clicking on it and dragging it over the new channel icon (fig.1). Then do the same for the Green & Blue channels
2. Now we select the red channel and select the threshold control (Image -> Adjust -> Threshold) then slide it all the way to the right (value 255) and slowly move it back to the left until the highlights start to appear as white against the black background (fig.2). Repeat this for the Blue & Green channels
3. Next, returning to the Layers palette, we load the adjusted Red copy channel as a selection (Select -> Load Selection and choose Red copy from the drop down menu. (fig.3). Next do the same for the Green & Blue channels but in both cases click on the "add to selection" radio button.
4. Now create a new layer from this selection (Layer -> New Layer -> Layer via Copy or Ctrl+J) (fig.4) then set the blending mode to "Screen" and duplicate the new layer.
5. Selecting the first new layer, select the Motion Blur filter (Filter -> Blur -> Motion Blur) and apply a substantial amount of motion blur in any direction you wish (I chose 70 degrees) (fig.5)
6. We can now see the starburst effect starting to appear, but it looks a little week, so drag the blurred layer over the New layer icon to duplicate the layer (fig.6)
Now we choose the unblurred duplicate layer (at the top of the layer stack) and again apply motion blur to this layer, but choose an angle at 90 degrees to the first motion blurred layer (I chose 160 degrees) and the same amount as before (fig.7). After applying this, again duplicate the layer.
And here's the completed image
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main : biography : galleries : contact : sales : equipment : tutorials : links : ©
monochrome : infra-red : cross processing : toning : vaseline : fisheye : CC fillters