Get paid for commercial fashion, magazine & product advertising design?!?  Yes you!  Learn the skills of Madison Avenue Advertising Designers here. (opens in new window)

I’ve create another copy of the original layer, transformed it so it’s skinnier and changed the blending modes to get a yellow streak. I am placing this in the center of the lightstream.

You could also create a fill layer of color (ie. yellow here) and change the blending mode to have it affect all layers beneath it.

On this yellow fill layer (selected in the layers palette), bring up the Filter: Artistic: Film Grain and choose a grainy setting that suits you. You don’t want it too strong but closer to the subtle effect that you see in many movie posters.

Make a selection of your key actor/actress/character and pull them in with the moVe tool. (The art & science of the selection is a very in-depth topic).

Create a layer mask using my tried and true method to get rid of the sharp edges. We want a blend here.

Duplicate the layer after you have the sharp edges masked. Now you can start to fool around with the blend modes until you find something that you think works (this is where your ‘eye’ as a designer really comes into play. B Modes are tricky to master because other than Ben Willmore they are NOT always the same in every situation because every situation is different. Blending Modes mix the light and dark image data of two layers (or more layers beneath if there are masked areas). Be sure to read my article on these. I love the power of the blending modes in practical use.

Often times you will have to turn layers on and off to see which layer a certain effect is happening on. Sometimes it will perplex you to actually find out where on earth a certain ‘blob’ is coming from (esp. when you have 15 layers beneath a given right click point).

Anyhoo, back to the lecture at hand... Remember that you have the power of all of the image adjustments available in Photoshop for each layer and a bevel (pun intended..is that a word) of layer effects (and layer masking! and filters...blbalhbalh).

Here I’m using the diamond gradient tool with black as the foreground color on a layer mask of this thin strip of light (yellowish). What this is doing (and you should try this out) is basically what I call “lightbleeding”. It’s letting more of the lighter layer (beneath it and lighter usually because of the blending mode) shine through only in certain areas where you choose.

Experiment around with your adjustments such as Image: Adjustments: Curves and Blend Modes all the time in a design like this.

Here I'm trying the yellow overlay fill layer on soft light.  If you want you can have this actual .psd file for free which will help you in leaps and bounds from the iPSDirectory when you get my PhotoshopDesigner training.