As long as you have enough imagination and creativity, you can create countless special effects with Photoshop's rich filter functions. This example will introduce you to how to draw a burning bolide. During the production process, it can help you become familiar with the use of some commonly used filters in Photoshop.
Let’s take a look at the final renderings first.
The specific steps are as follows.
1. Create a new document and fill the background layer with black. Use the Elliptical Marquee Tool to draw a circle in the middle. Hold down the Shift key while drawing to ensure that you draw a circle and not an ellipse. Select the menu command "Edit | Stroke" to open the "Stroke" dialog box, set the "Width" to 20px and the color to white, as shown in Figure 1. After setting, click the "OK" button.
Figure 1
Press Ctrl+D to cancel the selection. The results are shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2
2. Select the menu command "Filter | Distort | Ocean Ripple" to open the "Ocean Ripple" dialog box, as shown in Figure 3. Adjust the "Ripple Size" and "Ripple Amplitude" until you get the result as shown in Figure 4. Here, the "Ripple Size" is set to 6 and the "Ripple Amplitude" is set to 14.
Figure 3
Figure 4
3. Next select the menu command "Filter | Blur | Radial Blur", in the "Radial Blur" dialog box, set the "Amount" to 100, the "Blur Method" to "Scale", and the "Quality" setting is "best", as shown in Figure 5. After setting, click the "OK" button.
Figure 5
Then press Ctrl+F to apply radial blur again to get the effect shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6
4. Duplicate the layer and select the menu command "Filter | Distort | Ocean Ripple" again. Adjust the size according to the bolide you ultimately want. For example, you can keep trying to adjust the value until you get the effect shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7
5. Duplicate the layer, then select the menu command "Filter | Blur | Radial Blur" to apply the filter again to get the effect shown in Figure 8.
Figure 8
6. Change the blending mode of this layer to "Color Dodge" and change the blending mode of the next layer to "Lighten" to get the effect shown in Figure 9.
Figure 9
7. Create a new layer, change the blending mode to "Color", change the foreground color to orange, and the background color to red, and fill the layer with a radial gradient to get the effect shown in Figure 10 .
Figure 10
8. Select the menu command "Layer | Flatten Image" to merge all layers, use the move tool to move the bolide slightly to the upper left corner, and select the menu command "Filter | Distort | Extrude", according to the desired meteor " "Speed" adjust the value, for example, to get the effect shown in Figure 11.
Figure 11
9. Duplicate the layer, select the menu command "Filter | Blur | Motion Blur", set the "Angle" to -45 degrees, and set the "Distance" to 36 pixels. After applying the filter, change the layer mode to "Color Screen" and use the Eraser Tool to erase some of the middle of the meteor, allowing the magnification effect to apply directly to the meteor's tail. At this point you can see the effect shown in Figure 12.
Figure 12
10. Copy the layer where the main part of the meteor is located again, change the color mode to "Color Dodge", use the "Elliptical Marquee Tool" to select the core part of the meteor, use the menu command "Select | Feather" to feather the selection, use 5 for the value . Use the menu command "Select | Invert" to invert the selection and press the Del key. The meteor at this time is shown in Figure 13.
Figure 13
11. Press Ctrl+D to cancel the selection, so that we get the bolide as shown in Figure 14.
Figure 14