Create a Realistic Lightning Text Effect In Photoshop

Posted on December 7th, 2008 under Text Effects, it has 26 Comments and 64,286 Views so far.

In this tutorial, I will demonstrate the procedures I undertook to create a realistic Lightning Text Effect In Photoshop. We had a really big thunderstorm last night and that’s where the inspiration comes from!

The techniques involved in this tutorial are layer blending options, various image adjustment options, stamp tool, dodge/burn tool and brush tool.

Here is a preview of the final result:

Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create a new document, size doesn’t really matter but I chose 800×400px simply that’s where my comfort zone is. Fill the background layer with black colour.

Select a font, I used this font from fontspace.com, type some texts onto the background layer and this automatically form another layer. See below for position of the text:

Step 2

On the text layer, apply the following layer blending options:

Inner Shadow:

Outer Glow:

Inner Glow:

Bevel and Emboss:

Contour:

Gradient Overlay:

Pattern Overlay

The result so far looks like this:

Step 3

Find an image of lightning, I used this one from reformationquest.wordpress.com.

Load the image of your choice into Photoshop, select a portion of the lightning and copy and paste it onto our document. Name the layer as “lightning”.

Resize it and make it roughly the same size as the text. See below for details:

Then go to Image > Mode > Lab Color and change the mode of “lightning” layer to Lab. If askes whether to flatten the image, choose “Don’t Flatten”.

Hit Ctrl + M and bring up the curve tool, adjust the lightness contrast according to the settings below:

Change the image mode back to RGB Color, then hit Ctrl + L and bring the Level Adjustment tool, use the following settings:

The effect will now look like this:

Step 4

Now we can add some more lightning bolts (otherwise it looks a bit empty!). Use the Clone Stamp Tool and choose the big brush, and clone some bolts. Detailed settings see below:

Optional: You may also want to alter the Hue and Saturation of the “Lightning” layer a bit:

Change the layer blending option of “Lightning” layer to “Hard Light”. You can adjust the Hue and Saturation of this layer a bit, totally up to you.

The effect so far will look like this:

Step 5

Duplicate the “lightning” Layer once, hit Ctrl + Alt + Shift + B and bring up the Black and White Adjustment Tool, use the following settings:

Then duplicate the “lightning” again, this time drag the duplicated layer beneath the Text layer. Keep its layer blending option to “Hard Light”.

Change the layer blending option of “lightning” layer to “Color”, change to the blending option of “lightning copy” (the one above “Lightning” layer to to “Soft Light”.

You will now have the following image:

Step 6

Duplicate “Lightning layer copy 2″ (the one beneath the Text layer”) once, then go to Edit > Transform and Flip Vertical/Horizontal. Flip the duplicate layer vertical and horizontal once each. Alternatively, you can use free tranformation tool and rotate the layer.

Change the layer blending option to “difference” and set the layer opacity to 70%. See below for details:

This is the effect so far:

Ok, that’s it for this tutorial! The rest is left upon your own creativity, you may want to duplicate the lightning layer a few more times, or adjust the hue and saturation a bit.

Here is my final image for this tutorial:

Hope you enjoy this tutorial and find it useful and infomative!

Any question just drop me a line. Cheers and have a great day!

Florian Says:
less colours would do ;)

great effect, very inspiring
keep it up
James Says:
Thanks Florian!
sMiiGhT Says:
That is very nice and very helpful since my name is sMiiGhT it fits perfectly
noname Says:
not working for me badly….
followed all steps but at least i fucked up at step 3 – 4 ….
Thomas Reitz Says:
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Rimvydas Says:
hm… i tried to do this thing 6 times, but unfortunately after step 5 my text is almoust black and white, some grey too, but from where u get red color lightning clouds.. ? :) o repeat all the steps as exectly as i possibly can, but still efect is shit to me…
Nick Jenkins Says:
Wow! what an idea ! What a concept ! Beautiful .. Amazing
Jon Gee Says:
umm is there anyone way to remove the Black part without using Magic wand Im trying to use it on a background i made but it’s not working out to well
kaje Says:
There is a massive opacity or deletion step missing between 4 and 5.
kaje Says:
Step 3.5: You have to clone the “clouds” wherever the text is or the text wont glow…The more clouds and brighter clouds you have around the text, the more the text will glow.
Business Cards Says:
Excellent text effect! It’s interesting, exciting, and really cool! Maybe you could also include a tut on how to create lightning from scratch :) Thanks for sharing this, you did great!
The Times Online Says:
Hello, i’ve been browsing around your site and it looks really really neat. I’m building an automotive home page and struggling to make it look good, everytime I touch something I mess it up. How hard was it to build your site? Could someone like me with no experience do it, and add update pages without wrecking it every time?
The Baseball Village Says:
Great site, I just love my cars and this is one site I’ll keep coming back to! Thanks
stunts Says:
cool
Briget Says:
Hi Jamie

Have tried this numerous times but it hasn’t worked for me.I know it’s down to me that lol, but when you have added the text (which I am ok with) you copy and paste the lightening on to the document BUT do you position it over the text once you do copy and paste, in which case you don’t see the text then carry on with the rest of the steps OR do you work on the lightening before placing it over the text. The other thing is when you have to revert the lightening back to RGB do you hit the ‘don’t merge’ again. Sorry Jamie still finding my way round photoshop but better than I was since checking this site out.
Look forward to your help here. Thanks.
Briget.
Andy Says:
Wow! This came out great! I followed your tutorial on GIMP and it worked perfectly for me. The colors came out different, but the effects are the same. Great job!