In this tutorial we are going to create a cool Light Trail Effect to enhance your design. We have seen this type of effect in many magazine also it has been covered a lot on the web but i decided to write a tutorial on this topic as well due to a lot of request from our readers. This effect is really simple to achieve we are going to use custom brush a layer style and the pen tool to complete the effect.

Let’s start by selecting the pen tool.

Draw a path just like in the figure above or  whaterver  path  you like.

Click on Create New Layer.

Select the Brush Tool.

Click the brush preset and find the Fuzy Cluster Loose, select that brush preset.

Click the Brush options to start editing the settings.

Select the Brush Tip Shape.

Enter 45px for the Diameter, Note that in our case 45px works fine but this number depends on the size of the image so experiment until you find the right size for your images.

Select the Dual Brush.

Choose the 192 preset.

Now start modyfing the Diameter, Spacing, Scatter, and Count, in our case the seting we entered above worked fine.

Note that if you are using a Wacom Tablet than you need to activate in the Shape Dynamics the Pen Pressure option, also this is useful for the light to taper in and out when we apply the stroke.

Paint a stroke just to test out the settings we  created also we need this temporary stroke to design the layer style.

Click the FX icon and choose outer glow from the menu.

The outer glow should be selected if not do it.

Choose whatever color you like form the gradient menu.

Select Drop Shadow.

Choose a Bright Color.

For the Blend mode select Dissolve.

Now Lower the opacity so the little sparkles are less visible.

Click OK.

Now the layer style gets applied to the stroke, next with the layer 1 still selected hit CTRL+A to select everything and hit Backspace to delete the stroke, Note that the layer style is still available, if we paint on layer 1 the style gets applied.

Click on the Path Tab.

Select the Path  Right click on it and choose Stroke Path.

Make sure that Brush and Simulate Pressure are selected.

Click OK.

The stroke is applied to the path and the layer style has taken it’s effect, now make sure the layer is selected.

Click the Add Layer Mask Icon to apply a clipping mask.

Select the Brush tool.

Make Sure you set the foreground to Black and background to white and choose a normal size brush from the tool options.

Now start painting out the areas you want the stroke to go behind you model. Note that if you erase to much you can paint back by choosing the White color as the foreground.

Drag the stroke layer to the Create New Layer icon to make a copy of it.

Lower the opacity of the copied  layer to 50% just to make the effect a  bit more intense.

Drag the stroke  layer again to the Create New Layer icon to make another copy of it.

Go to Edit-Transform-Flip-Horizontal to flip the layer you just copied.

Select the Brush Tool make sure the foreground color is set to White.

Select the Layer Mask thumbnail.

Start painting in the stroke we erased earlier.

Select the Move Tool and place the stroke to the desired location. Also repeat steps 27-30 for this layer.

Double Click the Layer Thumbnail to Show the Layer Styles Option.

Select the Outer Glow and choose a color you  like for the stroke. Click Ok and the Effect is completed.

Guys like usual make sure you experiment all the way with the brush and layer style setting and see if you come up with more interesting results. This tutorial is just to show you the tools on how to achieve this kind of effect but the next step is to put your creativity to use combined with the skills you learned here.

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