Photoshop Sparkles: Add A Sparkle Trail To A Photo

Step 4: Select the "Star 70 Pixels" Brush

The "sparkle" brush we're creating is really just a combination of several other brushes that ship with Photoshop, and you can experiment on your own if you like with different brush combinations to create your own unique "sparkle" brush, since there's several brushes that would work well for this effect.

I'm going to start with the Star 70 pixels brush, so switch over to your Brushes palette, click on words Brush Presets in the top left corner to see a list of preset brushes on the right, then scroll down the list until you get to the "Star 70 pixels" brush.

Click on it to select it:

Step 5: Click In A Few Random Spots Inside The Document With The Brush

With the "Star 70 pixels" brush selected, click in a few random spots inside the document to add our first few "sparkles". Three or four clicks should do the trick:

Step 6: Select the "Airbrush Soft Round 17" Brush

After you've added the first few sparkles, switch back to the Brushes palette and scroll up the list of preset brushes until you come to the Airbrush Soft Round 17 brush. Click on it to select it:

Step 7: Click In A Few Random Spots Inside The Document With The New Brush

Just as we did with the previous brush a moment ago, click in three or four random spots inside the document with the new brush. This adds more "sparkles", as well as a little variety to them:

Step 8: Select The "Assorted Brushes"

Switch back to the Brushes palette once again, and this time, click on the small right-pointing arrow at the top of the palette to access the drop-down menu and select Assorted Brushes from the list of additional brushes at the bottom:

Photoshop will pop up a message asking if you want to replace the existing brushes with the new brushes. Click the Append option to have Photoshop simply add the new brushes in with the existing brushes rather than replacing them: