Johanne Brunet

I made this image for a challenge which consisted in creating A hand-made sunrise, sunset or sunbeam or storm work. After uploading it to my portfolio, with some details as to how it was created, I was asked to post the tutorial in a Photoshop oriented forum.

So there it is in a more detailed version. I hope that you will find it useful. Please do not hesitate to signal any mistake you might find or ask for clarification if you find some point confusing.

This is the modified image:

I started with a not so interesting colour photo which presented a nice dense cloudy sky, and the trees in the foreground was dim and more in silhouette. It was shot at sunset, so the sky was not too bright, just enough to show a good definition in the clouds and suggest the presence of ozone in the atmosphere. My original photo was 3872×2592 pixels. The size of the photo is important to mention in this case because you might have to adjust the different values depending on your image size.

Original image

If you prefer, you can use my original photo by right clicking on the link and saving to your computer. Link to original photo

STEP 1 – CONVERT TO BLACK AND WHITE
I used a tutorial published by Design by Fire . It had been originally created by the photographer Greg Gorman’s photo retoucher, Rob Carr.

If you decide to use this tutorial, please note that in Photoshop 6, you have to convert image mode back to 8 bits prior to step 4 where you need to Ctrl+Click (Windows) on the thumbnail of the Channels palette to load a selection, or else it won’t work. I don’t know how it is for other versions; you will have to try.

For this image, I chose a greenish tone for my solid color adjustment layer in step 6, picking my colour at left, near the bottom of the color picker as shown in the tutorial (theirs is in a red palette instead of green).

STEP 2 – CREATING RAIN

After converting my image to a nice and rich black and white, I used another interesting tutorial that I found on the internet to create rain. This great and easy tutorial was made by Domen Lombergar and if you wish, you can view his tutorial on video right here However, I will write below each step of the tutorial anyway, entering the settings that I have used for this particular image.

1. You should now have a nice black and white image to start with.

2. Add a new layer, name it Rain and fill it with black.

3. Now we need to add noise. Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise and enter 400% in the amount value. You may have to enter more if your image is larger or less if your image is smaller. Check either Uniform or Gaussian, it doesn’t matter, but make sure that the box Monochromatic is checked. Click OK.

4. Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and play with the angle and distance until you are satisfied. In this instance, I chose a negative angle value of -41 , and a distance of 61 pixels .

5. I adjusted the opacity to 34% (may vary according to taste and to background image) and blended in screen mode.

6. The next thing was to create an adjustment layer on the background image (between the background and the rain layers) to darken the background a little and match the atmosphere.

7. I finished the rain process by cropping the blurred edges out, leaving me with image approximately 3780 by 2500 pixels in size.

STEP 3 – CREATING A LIGHTNING BOLT

For the last step, I created a lightning bolt using a great tutorial by Matthew Whiting

1. You need to start your lightning in a new document with the background set to transparent. My rainy black and white image was a little more that 2500 px high, and I figured that my lightning bolt would run from the little hole in the clouds to the bottom, meaning a little more than half of the height. Just to be sure, I made my new document a transparent square of 1500×1500 pixels.

2. Now you will fill it with a gradient. To do so, make sure that your default colours are set to black and white by hitting the D key. Then, pick your Gradient tool from the tools menu and in the horizontal menu at the top of your screen, choose a black to white gradient, making certain that the Linear gradient option is selected. Holding the Shift key, trace a straight horizontal line accross the layer, starting at about ¼ of the document and stopping at ¾.

Placing a grid on your document could help you gauge where to start and finish, if you’re not sure. To do this, go to Edit > Preferences > Guides and Grid . In the Grid section, put 25 in the box marked Gridline every: , change the measuring units to %* , and write *0 in Subdivisions. Click OK then go to View > Show and select Grid . This is really useful as well to assess the rule of thirds. In that case, you just change the percentage to 33,3 in the Guides and Grid preferences.

Back to the lightning now!

3. Now that you have a nice gradient, apply a Difference Clouds filter by clicking Filter > Render > Difference Clouds.

4. Your bolt is starting to show, but it is black and you need to change it to white. To do so, just hit Ctrl+i (Windows) or (Cmd+i in Mac) in order to invert the image. You could also use the command Image > Adjust < Invert .

5. Adding a Levels adjustment layer , you will push the black cursor to the right, mine was pushed to about 170 and slide the gamma (gray) triangle to the right as well, next to the white one which must remain at 255. Again, you might want to vary a bit according to your own image.

6. Select the image and go to Edit > Copy Merged, then paste into your rainy black and white photo, place into appropriate position, and blend in screen mode.

7. Now is the time to modify the general shape of the bolt if you find it too wavy. To do this, make sure that the bolt layer is active in the Layers palette and go to Edit > Transform > Distort . Pull the handle up to elongate the bolt a bit and or pull the sides in a bit if you wish. Apply your transformation when satisfied.

8. Should you wish to add little branches to your bolt, you can do so by selecting some that are sticking out and either cut or copy to a new layer, then position to taste. You can do this and reverse them horizontally to put some on the other side too.

9. When your bolt is shaped to your liking, use the eraser tool set at 0 hardness and 45 % opacity to slowly erase the extra blur around the bold and any remaining clouds (from the difference clouds step) that you don’t want.

10. Adjust levels again if needed.

THE LAST STEP! – GLOWING LIGHT

Finally, the lightning bolt needs some surrounding light to look realistic.

1. Create a new transparent layer, right under the rain layer at the top.

2. Select a large soft and round brush of 279 px and hardness set to 0, and adjust the Brush Dynamics to fade in size and opacity (I used 70 steps for size and 100 steps for opacity).

3. Make sure that white is the foreground colour in your default colours, select it and paint over the lightning bolt, starting from the bottom and going up to the originating point.

4. Apply a gaussian blur filter (I used 160 radius) and fix opacity to your liking.

If you wish, you can add a spot of additional light at the point where the lightning bolt originates from the clouds using the same method as for the addition of glowing light along the bolt.

1. Create a new transparent layer, right under the rain layer at the top.

2. Select a large soft and round brush of 279 px and hardness set to 0, and apply a dot of white at the appropriate point.

3. Apply a gaussian blur filter (I used 160 radius) and fix opacity to your liking.

Voilà! You should now have a great stormy landscape!

I hope that I have not confused you too much. Have fun!