Photoshop Tutorials: Adding Sunlight Through The Trees

Step 4: Load The Channel As A Selection

Hold down your Ctrl (Win) / Command (Mac) key and click directly on the channel in the Channels palette:

This loads the channel as a selection in the image:

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Step 5: Add A New Blank Layer

Switch over to your Layers palette at this point and click on the New Layer icon at the bottom to add a new blank layer:

You'll see your image turn back into a full color image as soon as you click on the icon, and Photoshop adds a new blank layer named "Layer 1" above the Background layer in the Layers palette:

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Step 6: Fill The Selection With White

Press the letter D on your keyboard to reset your Foreground and Background colors if needed, which sets black as your Foreground color and white as your Background color. Then use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Backspace (Win) / Command+Delete (Mac) to fill the selection with white on the new layer. It may not be easy to tell that anything has happened if your sky was already fairly white to begin with as mine is, which is why I haven't included a screenshot here, but we've now filled the sky area with solid white and we're going to use it to create our sunbeams.

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Step 7: Duplicate The New Layer

With "Layer 1" selected in the Layers palette (the currently selected layer is highlighted in blue), use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac) to duplicate the layer. A copy of the layer, which Photoshop names "Layer 2", appears at the top of the Layers palette:

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Step 8: Apply The "Radial Blur" Filter To "Layer 2"

We're now going to create our sunbeams. With "Layer 2" selected in the Layers palette, go up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, choose Blur, and then choose Radial Blur. This brings up the Radial Blur filter's dialog box. Increase the Amount option at the top to somewhere around 80, although this value will depend on the size of your image and how long you need your sunbeams to be. The higher you set this value, the longer they'll be, so you'll probably need to experiment a little here. Select Zoom for the Blur Method, which is what's going to give us our sunbeam shapes, and set the Quality option to Best. If you're running Photoshop on a slower computer and you're simply experimenting at this point with the Amount value, you may want to set the Quality option to either "Good" or "Draft", which will give you lower quality sunbeams while you're experimenting but won't take as long for Photoshop to render them. You'll want to set it to "Best" though when you're ready to create the actual effect.

In the bottom right corner of the dialog box, you'll see the Blur Center option. This is where we tell Photoshop where want the sunbeams to start from (the spot where they'll "zoom" out from). The square area represents your image (even though your image probably isn't square). Click in the general spot where you want the sunbeams to be coming from. I want my sunbeams to start from approximately a quarter of the way down from the top center of the image, so that's where I've clicked inside the square:

Click OK when you're done to exit out of the dialog box and have Photoshop create our first batch of sunbeams:

The sunbeams don't really stand out very well just yet, but we'll fix that next.