Alright now, this is what, my third try at making this tutorial?! Ok, Gimp Shop is a free program, and very similar to photo shop. You can get the Gimp Shop program here, http://www.gimpshop.com/ Ok now lets start.
First off, make a new layer. On the screen that pops up select foreground color and press ok. Now your new layer should be black. Next change it to screen mode. That option is located on a box that should be on the right side of your screen. So with all that taken care of select the paint brush tool and create a strait line. Then after that, go under filter, distort, then ripple. Select how much of a bend you want in your stream then press ok.
After that, it’s time to glow. Duplicate that layer 3 times. Now time to give all of them a Gaussian Blur. Select the original layer and then select the width of blur-
Original layer- 5
Copy 1- 10
copy 2- 20
copy 3- 30
Now your beam should have a nice glow,
Alright after that you need to merge all of the beam layers, make sure not to merge them to the main image while you merge them. You need to merge one to one at a time, when you merge one the background turns black and you need to switch it to screen, now repeat this until the beam layers are all merged. Now to give your beam that orange-gold glow, go under image, adjustments, color balance. Now, there’s thee options there. And sliders, to change the color, heres the settings I go with. But make sure the preserve Luminosity setting isn’t selected.
Shadows- Yellow 79
Midtones- Red 50, Yellow 50
Highlights- Red- 73, yellow 100
And now your beam should look like this
And now for the lightning. It’s done just like the beam, but on a much smaller scale. Make new layer, just like with the beam. Now use the paint brush tool, and try your best to draw the lighting. Once done duplicated it 3 time just like with the beam, and time for a Gaussian blur. Start with the first copy
Copy1- 2
copy2- 4
copy3- 8
Now your lighting should have a nice white glow to it.
Again after that you need to merge all of the lightning layers, make sure not to merge them to the main image while you merge them. You need to merge one to one at a time, when you merge one the background turns black and you need to switch it to screen, now repeat this until the lightning layers are all merged. Now to change this white to blue just like the beam, with the color balance. But make sure the preserve Luminosity setting isn’t selected.
Shadows- Cyan100, blue100
Midtones- Cyan100, blue100
Highlights- cyan100, blue100
Now your lightning should look like this
merge the beam and the lightning together, and you’ll have to set that layer to screen. Now we’ll give that a slight motion blur, under the same place as the Gaussian blur,
Now it 's time for the proton flare!
Time to use the flare; you can use the same one I used as an example, shown above. To do it, save it to your picture file. Then in Gimp open a new layer, but hold off on setting it to screen mode. Now open a new image, the flare. Use the cut option, and then close the new window that opening the new image made. Then paste it into the window that you’re creating the proton stream in, now turn the layer to screen mode. Put the flare between the gun barrel and the stream. It may be a bit big so right click on the flare layer and click on scale layer. It may take a couple of tries to get it to the size you want.
We’re going to want to give the flare a Gaussian blur of 8.
Then merge all layers, and there ya go!
