Starburst Effect in Photoshop

With the holidays coming I thought I’d start sharing a few quick tricks to help create cards and invitations.

I’m starting off with the popular Starburt Effect

We need to start off by making a stripe pattern. Open a file and size it to 20 by 100 pixels. Have your two colors already picked out in the color pallet. Fill in the picture with your top color.

Then at your top toolbar go to IMAGE then CANVAS SIZE. Set the width to 20 pixels. In the ANCHOR BOX set it to the far left middle square. In the canvas color pick BACK GROUND COLOR. The press ok

Next you are going to save this as a defining pattern by going to the top tool bar and selecting EDIT then DEFINE PATTERN. Name it what ever you will remember and press ok.

Now open a new image any size you would like your picture to be. Make a copy of the background by going to the top toolbar and IMAGE and DUPLICATE IMAGE.

In the LAYERS tool bar look for the fx at the bottom of box (this is the ADD LAYER STYLE) and select PATTERN OVERLAY.

Next you will pick the pattern we just made earlier by clicking the drop down arrow on the pattern box.

at the bottom of the box you will see our pattern.  Click on the pattern and adjust the SCALE (or size) as needed. Press OK

Now we have our pattern so merge the layers by pressing CTL + E. Now we have vertical stripes.  Now go to your top tool bar and choose FILTER then DISTORT and finally POLAR COORDINATES. You can leave as is if you want or adjust where the middle starts by clicking in the box(you’ll see a little glove) and moving it around. Select OK.

Now you’re done and free to go where ever your imagination takes you with it. Have fun!

Tagged as: Photoshop, star burst, starburst