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In this tutorial, I will show you the method I use to design a simple, yet elegant abstract spectrum lines in Photoshop. You will see how easy it is to achieve this nice effect and you can use it a wide range of occasions including perhaps site header backgrounds, logos, or add extra flavor to your photo manipulations.

This tutorial is suitable for beginners and I included the ways of creating new brush presets and also the use of Pen Tool. You will ample opportunities to practive layer blending, filters and Free Transform Tools. Have a try!

Here is a preview of the final effect: (click to enlarge)

spectrum-lines-final

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Ok let’s get started!

Step 1

Create  a new document with black background, for size I chose 980px * 400px however you can change this according to your own preference. Use 72 pixel/inch for resolution since we’re creating an image used for website.

Now let’s make a new brush preset. To do this, firstly select the brush tool with the following brush:

1-brush

Then apply the following brush dynamics to it:

Shape Dynamics

1-shape-dyn-2

Scattering

1-scattering

Other Dynamics

1-other-dyn

Make sure you also select the Airbrush and Smoothing option.

After finishing making this brush, let’s save it as a new brush preset so that we can use it in the future too. To do this, left-click the down tri-angle on the top right and click “new brush preset”:

1-new-brush-preset

And Enter the following into the window popup:

1-name

Then you will see the brush preset appear in the brush selection window:

1-after-save

Step 2

Create a new layer call “lines”, grab the Pen Tool and draw the following working path:

2-pen-tool

Hint: hold down Shift key and drag your mouse upwards approximately 45 degree for both archor points.

Then right-click and select the option “Stroke Path”:

2-stroke-path

Then choose the option “brush” and tick the “Simulate Pressure”:

2-brush

And you will have the following effect:

2-effect1

Step 3

Still on this “lines” layer, go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and apply the following settings:

3-motion-blur

Then hit Ctrl + F and apply the motion blur filter again, and you will have the following effect:

3-effect1

Apply the following Gradient Overlay blending option to this layer:

3-grad

Then duplicate this layer 4 times and merge the duplicated layer together, you will have the following effect:

3-effect-2

Rename this layer as “lines” after the merge.

Step 4

Again we duplicate the “lines” layers 3 times, and you will see the colour of the the spectrum become clearer:

4-duplicate

Then we merge those duplicated layer together, then use the Free Transform tool to resize it into the following:

4-resize

Then we can use the Warp Tool (Ctrl + T and right-click select “Warp”), transform it into the following shape:

4-warp

And here is the effect after warping:

4-effect1

Step 5

Now we can really just use our imagination and simply duplicate this “lines” layer a few times, rotate and resize each duplicated layer until the outcome is desirable:

Here is my effect so far:

5-effect1

Merge the duplicate layer together.

We can also add a bit of glowing effect to the spectrum lines. To do this, simple duplicate the merged layer and apply the following Gaussian Blur settings: (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur)

5-gaussian-blur

Change the blending mode the duplicated layer to “Linear light” and you will have the following effect:

5-effect-21

To add some final touches, remember we created a new brush preset in Step 1? We can use it to add some nice dots on the abstract line.

Create a new layer called “dots” on top of all other layers, grab that brush preset and simply paint over the lines:

5-paint

Then Change the layer blending mode to “Overlay” and you will have the following effect:

5-blend

Duplicate this “dots” layer and change the blending mode of the duplicated layer back to “normal”, then reduce its opacity to 15% and erase some excessive parts.

You will have the following final effect:

5-final

Ok that’s it for this tutorial! Of course you can further enhance this image by adding some more effect, textures and filters.

Here is my final version for this tutorial: (Added a bit of cloudy effect and sharpen the image )

spectrum-lines-final

Hope you enjoy this tutorial and find it useful, drop me a comment if you have any question, I will try my best to help you out.

Cheers and have a nice day!

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