I love photos with beautiful sun rays/lens flare and get excited when I can capture them in-camera (above). However, sometimes you want to have the artistic license to add them to your photo later in the editing process. I wrote my Sun Kissed action using the lens flare option in Photoshop, but I really also wanted the option to manually add my own sunburst with a Photoshop brush.
Like usual, I prefer to create my own brush and then share it to you so you can use it in your own editing. So I googled and found this little video that I followed to create two Photoshop brushes.
Download the zipped file to your desktop and then unzip it. Right click on the brush file (abr) and then click on "Open with" and open it in Photoshop or PSE. If you want to install it permanently in PSE then go to Edit, Preset Manager. Then Load the actions and click on Done (see screenshot below).
To use the brush (I will have screenshots on my next post), add a new layer over your image. Select your brush color and brush the sunburst brush on your image. Free Transform it to fit your image and then slightly gaussian blur to make it more realistic. You can use a white brush and put it in screen mode and adjust opacity or use a color.
I used the first brush to create the edit below (mouse over to see the before image). Today I am posting the download for the free brushes and next post will be a step-by-step tutorial how I edited this image. Please stop by tomorrow!
Download the free CoffeeShop Sunburst Brushes! You can also download them here.
Do you want to download my favorite CoffeeShop PSE/Photoshop Actions and Lightroom Presets or Design Elements in one convenient zipped file AND help support this blog? Just click here for my action pack or here for a download of some of my most popular design elements, storyboards, and textures.
For complete info on installing all of my actions, click here.
