How to add a sparkle trail to a photo, using a custom Photoshop sparkle brush we'll be creating. Photoshop makes them extremely easy to create thanks to the powerful brush controls that were introduced in Photoshop 7.
Let's make her magic wand look a little more magical by adding a sparkle trail.
To begin, go up to the File menu at the top of the screen and choose New, which brings up Photoshop's New Document dialog box. Enter 200 pixels for the Width and 200 pixels for the Height, and make sure the Background Contents option near the bottom is set to White so our new document has a white background, then click OK:
With our new document created, select the Brush Tool from the Tools palette, or simply press the letter B on your keyboard to access it with the shortcut.
We need black as our Foreground color, which is the color Photoshop uses to paint with when we have the Brush Tool selected, so if black is not currently your Foreground color, press the letter D reset your Foreground and Background colors, which sets black as your Foreground color (white becomes your Background color). We can see our current Foreground and Background colors in the color swatches near the bottom of the Tools palette (the swatch in the upper left is the Foreground color and the one in the bottom right is the Background color).
The "sparkle" brush we're creating is really just a combination of several other brushes that ship with Photoshop, and you can experiment on your own if you like with different brush combinations to create your own unique "sparkle" brush, since there's several brushes that would work well for this effect.
I'm going to start with the Star 70 pixels brush, so switch over to your Brushes palette, click on words Brush Presets in the top left corner to see a list of preset brushes on the right, then scroll down the list until you get to the "Star 70 pixels" brush.
With the "Star 70 pixels" brush selected, click in a few random spots inside the document to add our first few "sparkles". Three or four clicks should do the trick:
After you've added the first few sparkles, switch back to the Brushes palette and scroll up the list of preset brushes until you come to the Airbrush Soft Round 17 brush. Click on it to select it:
Just as we did with the previous brush a moment ago, click in three or four random spots inside the document with the new brush. This adds more "sparkles", as well as a little variety to them:
Switch back to the Brushes palette once again, and this time, click on the small right-pointing arrow at the top of the palette to access the drop-down menu and select Assorted Brushes from the list of additional brushes at the bottom:
With the Assorted Brushes added in the Brushes palette, scroll down the list until you come to the Starbust - Small brush and click on it to select it:
With the "Starburst - Small" brush selected, click in another three or four random spots inside the document to add the rest of our sparkles:
We've added all of our sparkles. All we need to do now is save them as a brush. To do that, go up to the Edit menu at the top of the screen and choose Define Brush Preset. Photoshop will pop up a dialog box asking you to name the brush. I'm going to name mine "Sparkle Brush":
With our "sparkle brush" now created, we can add our sparkle trail to a photo, so go ahead and open the photo you want to use if it isn't open already. Then click on the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette to add a new blank layer above the Background layer, which is the layer that contains our image. Photoshop will automatically name the new layer "Layer 1". Double-click directly on the name and rename it to "Sparkles":
We need to select the "Sparkle Brush" we just created, but in order to select it, we first need to have the Brush Tool selected, so go ahead and either select it from the Tools palette or press B on your keyboard:
Our sparkle trail wouldn't look very impressive it we created it in black, so we need to set our Foreground color to white. To do that, simply press X on our keyboard to swap your current Foreground and Background colors, which will set white as your Foreground color (black becomes your Background color). Again, we can see this in the color swatches near the bottom of the Tools palette:
Switch back over to your Brushes palette, click once again on the words "Brush Presets" in the top left corner of the palette if the option isn't already selected, then scroll all the way down to the bottom of the list of preset brushes on the right. Your "Sparkle Brush" (or whatever you named it) will appear at the bottom:
Click directly on the words Shape Dynamics on the left of the Brushes palette to select the "Shape Dynamics" options, which will appear on the right of the palette. Make sure you click directly on the words and don't just click inside the checkbox on the left:
With "Shape Dynamics" selected, if you look in the top right of the Brushes palette, you'll see a "Size Jitter" option, and directly below that, you'll see a Control option. This "Control" option is technically the "Size Control" option and it allows us to specify what, if anything, will affect the size of the brush as we paint with it. Click on the down-pointing arrow and choose Fade from the list, then enter 25 in the box beside it:
Click directly on the words Scattering on the left of the Brushes palette, below the words "Shape Dynamics", to bring up the "Scattering" options. Again, make sure you click directly on the words and don't just click inside the checkbox on the left. We want the "Scattering" options to appear on the right of the Brushes palette and for that, we need to click directly on the words:
When the Scattering options appear on the right of the Brushes palette, enter 110% for the Scatter Amount, then enter 3 for the Count option and 35% for the Count Jitter:
Click directly on the words Brush Tip Shape in the top left of the Brushes palette, below the words "Brush Presets". Then, down near the bottom of the Brushes palette, set the Spacing option to about 50%:
Our "Sparkle Brush" has been created and the options have been set in the Brushes palette, so with white as our Foreground color, we can go ahead and add our sparkle trail! To do that, click either or or just beside the object that's creating the sparkle trail (the girl's magic wand in my image) and then drag out a brush stroke in the direction you want the sparkle trail to be coming from. You'll probably need to resize your brush first, and the easiest way to do that is by using the left and right bracket keys on your keyboard. The left bracket key makes the brush smaller and the right bracket key makes it larger.
I'm going to click just to the left of the girl's magic wand and then drag my brush over her head and down the right side, as if the sparkle trail was created by her waving the wand. Notice how Photoshop fades the size of the brush as the brush stroke gets further and further from the starting point, until the brush eventually fades to nothing, thanks to the options we set in the Brushes palette:
With the "Sparkles" layer selected in the Layers palette, use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac) to duplicate the layer. A copy of the layer will appear above the original in the Layers palette:
We're going to add a bit of a glow to our sparkles, and we'll do that by adding a slight blurring effect to the duplicate layer we just created. Go up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, choose Blur, and then choose Gaussian Blur. When the Gaussian Blur dialog box appears, enter a Radius value of about 4 pixels:
To increase the brightness of our sparkles, with the "Sparkles copy" layer selected, once again use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac) to create a duplicate of it, which appears at the top of the Layers palette:
To complete the effect, let's add a bit of color to the glow around the sparkles. To do that, with the top layer selected in the Layers palette, click on the Layer Styles icon at the bottom of the Layers palette (the icon that looks like the letter "f") and select Outer Glow from the list:
This brings up the Layer Style dialog box with the Outer Glow options in the middle column. Choose a color for your glow by clicking on the color swatch directly below the word "Noise" and choosing a color from Photoshop's Color Picker. I'm going to choose a pinkish-red color for mine. Then decrease the intensity of the color by lowering the Opacity of the glow. I'm going to lower mine to about 60%:
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Photoshop Sparkles: Add A Sparkle Trail To A Photo