Inspiration is all over the ‘web. Hopefully getting inspired will lead you to a desire to create your own original designs. I’ve decided to start a new series: Mini PS tutorial. In this series, I will include some very simple Photoshop tutorials designed for Photoshop beginners. The aim of those mini-tutorials are simple: to help you become familiar with a variety of Photoshop tools and show you how to combine techniques to produce great effects for your designs. The effects are mostly abstract, and you can apply them to a wide range of designs. Although certain gaffes in Photoshop are common, this design is nearly fool-proof.

In this first volume of Photoshop Mini tutorial series, I will show you the steps I took to create this Simple Abstract Shining Wave Line in Photoshop in just 5 steps. Have a try!

Here is a preview of the final effect we will be creating:Alternative version:

No Stock image is required for this tutorial. This tutorial is best for Photoshop CS2 or +.

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document sized 470px * 330px, and fill the background with black color. Create a new layer called “baseline” and grab a big white brush with 0% hardness. Single-click the new layer:Hit Ctrl + T to enable the free transform tool:

Compress the dot with the free transform tool, by holding the Alt key while dragging the top edge:

Reduce the layer opacity of this baseline layer to around 60%, you will have the following effect:

 

Step 2

Duplicate this baseline layer once. On the duplicated layer, again we use the free-transform tool to scale it to a smaller size, and position the design as shown below:

Grab a smaller soft white brush, single-click along the baseline a few times:

 

Step 3

Ok let’s make a new brushset. Hit “F5? and bring up the brush window, apply the following brush presets:

Shape DynamicsOther dynamics:

Make sure to tick the “airbrush”, “smoothing” and “protect texture” settings. Save the brushset if you wish.

Then use the Pen Tool, draw a work path as shown below:

Hit “Ctrl + Shift + N” and create a new layer called “abstract lines”, right-click and choose “Stroke Path”:

Make sure you tick the “Simulate Pressure” on the new window:

The effect should look something like this:

 

Step 4

On this abstract line layer, apply the following “Motion Blur” settings:

Hit “Ctrl + F” and re-apply this blur effect a few more times, and you will have following effect:

Use the free transform tool to scale it as shown below:

For variety, we can duplicate this abstract line layer a few more times, and scatter them around the baseline:

We can also add some highlights to the abstract line by duplicating the baseline layer a few times, and dragging the duplicated layers to the top, resizing each of them and rotating them 90 degree clockwise: (increase the opacity to around 90% for the duplicated layers)

Step 5

To fine-tune the image, we can add the following adjustment layers to the image:

Curves

 

 

Color Balance

Levels

To add some particle effect around the lines, we can use the smart sharpen filter: (settings shown below, make sure you flatten the layers first)

This is the final effect you should achieve with this tutorial:

You can also experiment different color scheme. Here is an alternative version for this tutorial:

Tom Chu work for PsPrint and PsPrint Blog. When he’s not sitting behind a computer, Tom likes watching sci-fi movies and Japanese cartoons, hitting the golf course and playing with his four dogs. You can connect with Tom via Google+ or Twitter.