We’ll briefly demonstrate a very simple example of Photoshop’s ability to create interesting images entirely from scratch, rather than merely editing existing image material. We’ll be creating a colorized lightning bolt. First, create a new image. Make it 800 x 600 pixels in size, at 72 pixels/inch (recall this is the resolution of a monitor), and make the background contents transparent. Make sure the color mode is RGB.

We’ll now apply a filter to our image which will turn our gradient into a cloudy image, but with a faint hint of a lightning bolt running across the center. Go to Filter ? Render ? Difference Clouds

The lightning bolt isn’t particularly visible, so we’re going to do a few edits. Go to Image ? Adjustments ? Levels, and then drag the middle slider to the left and right until the lightning bolt in the center becomes more pronounced.

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