Keetee

This tutorial will walk you through creating beautiful, smooth streaks that swirl around your subject. Since a number of readers have asked in particular about the use of this in Fairytale Flow, we’ll also add a dusty sparkle effect to the streak.

Before we start, a tremendous thanks for your e-mails, comments, and linkage. I’m having such a fun time with this blog, and that is thanks to you! ♥ :)

Final Image Preview

Assets

• Tribal 3 Bend. For this tutorial, I’ve downloaded the full version and resized it to 900 pixels wide, so note that my brushes will be sized accordingly.

The Process

The first step is to create the path for our streak. If this looks difficult, feel free to check out my simple introduction to using the Pen Tool in Photoshop to create streaks first for a quick primer.

Start by selecting the Pen Tool from the Tools panel. Add a single click in the area to the upper-right of the hand, like so:

Next, we want to add our first curve. In the image below, I show you how this is done: click in the spot shown on the hand, continue holding down the mouse button, and drag to the left and slightly downward to curve the line.

Continue to use this click-and-curve method to create a series of curves. I’ll show you all the points I made. Moving down her arm:

Near the shoulder:

By her waist:

Top of the leg:

Moving down the leg:

The foot:

And finally, I finish by moving just off the toes:

So here’s our final path:

Now we want to give our path some solidity. Select the Brush Tool from the Tools panel and open the Brushes panel (Windows » Brushes). Set the options to 9px, 100% hardness, and white. Check the Shape Dynamics item and set Size Jitter to Pen Pressure in it.

Create a new layer, name it Streak, and ensure it’s selected.

Go to the Paths panel (Windows » Paths). Right-click the path you created and go to Stroke Path. Make sure that Brush is selected from the dropdown and that Simulate Pressure is checked. Click OK. To stop showing the path on your canvas, just click in the gray, empty area in the Paths panel to deselect.

You should now see your new stroke:

Since the tapered edges are a little thin, I like to duplicate my streak a couple times to brighten them up. Duplicate your Streak layer twice (right-click and Duplicate, or just drag the layer on to the New Layer button). Select all three Streak layers by holding down CTRL and clicking each one. Then go to Layers » Merge Layers:

Next, we’re going to mask the areas of the streak we don’t want to show. I have a quick, easy introduction to Photoshop masking for those unfamiliar with the technique.

Select your Streak layer. Open the Masks panel (Window » Masks) and click on the Add Pixel Mask button. You should now see a white box appear on your layer. That’s your mask.

Anything we paint in black on the mask will be hidden. Anything we paint in white will show. By default, the whole thing is white. Select the Brush Tool, set it to black, 100% hardness and 9px. Ensure the layer mask (white box on your layer) is selected.

Start painting over any area you don’t want to show in black. Think of it as erasing—but if you mess up, you can just switch your brush color to white and paint that part of the image back in.

So here we go, starting from the top. I erase over the hand and a part of the arm:

See how it looks like the streak goes behind the arm? I do this for the rest of the body, too:

I’ve discussed using Blending Options to create a glow on streaks before, but I don’t really use this method any more. I prefer to blur as I feel it gives me a little more control over the way my light disperses. The choice is yours, but I’ll be showing you how to use blur for this one.

I do two blurs: one that’s close to the streak, and one that’s a little more dispersed.

For our first blur, duplicate your Streak layer. Name this new layer Blur 1. Right-click the mask on this layer and select Apply Layer Mask. All the parts that were previously just ‘hidden’ because of our mask are now officially erased.

Go to Filter » Blur » Gaussian Blur. Set the Radius to 8 pixels. The result:

For a more general blur, duplicate your Blur 1 layer and name it Blur 2. Go to Filter » Blur » Gaussian Blur again and set the Radius to 15 pixels. Result:

Now for a little sparkly texture!

Duplicate your Blur 1 layer, name it Sparkles 1, and put it above everything else. Change the Blending Mode to Dissolve. (Blending Mode can be changed through the little dropdown on the top of the Layers panel.)

Layers that are set to Dissolve will show edges that fade (dissolve, even) into a diffusion of sparkle-esque pixels. Since our layer was blurred and had no edges, it just gave us a random spread of sparkles. The only issue with this is that when we decrease the opacity, we just get fewer sparkles, not lower-opacity sparkles. Let’s solve this!

Create a new layer below Sparkles 1. Select the Sparkles 1 layer, and go to Layers » Merge Down.

Now our Sparkles 1 layer no longer has the same Blending Mode, but it still retains the look! We can adjust the opacity freely, so set it to 25%.

For more depth to our sparkles, duplicate the Blur 1 layer again and name it Sparkles 2. Set the Blending Mode to Dissolve. To decrease the number of pixels, decrease the opacity—I set mine to 7%:

Finally, for a little cleanup, take the eraser tool and remove any sparkles from unwanted areas—on her dress, for example.

Final Image

Thank you for reading! Don’t forget, I’m always happy to answer questions; just leave ‘em in the comments!