My Portfolio Website - www.yusuf-osman.com

yusuf.o@gmail.com

Welcome to the lightning animation tutorial!  In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a realistic lightning animation.

Download the brushes used... HERE

1)  Create a new document in Adobe Photoshop, with a black background.

2)  Create a new layer in Photoshop, and in this layer, use one of the lightning brushes (supplied), and press anywhere on the canvas to create the lightning bolt.

3)  Open up imageready (picture below)

4)  You should now see this ....

If you do not see this, go to WINDOW, and make sure ANIMATION is checked

5)  Make your layer (the one with the lightning bolt on it) invisible but pressing the little eye icon next to the layer.  Now create 3 new frames (by pressing the paper button).  Finally make it so that the lightning bolt is visible on the final frame, by clicking on the 4th frame, and clicking on the eye button next to your lightning layer.  See the picture if you're stuck!

6)  Now, with the 4th frame highlighted, hold the shift button, and click on the first frame.  Now the four frames should be highlighted.  Now press the "tween" button, illustrated below.

After you press the tween button (shown above) you should have something that looks like that^^.  From now on, we will refer to this process as "tweening".  For example, we "tweened" between frames 1 and 4 in this situation.

7)  Create two new frames (so that you have 6 frames overall), and make the lightning layer invisible on the sixth frame (by clicking on the sixth frame, and pressing the eye button next to the lightning layer.

Now tween between frame 4 and 6 (see below for illustration)

8)  Create two new frames, and make it so that the lightning layer is visible on the eighth frame. (see below)

Now tween between the 6th and 8th layer.

9)  Create 7 new frames, and make the last frame (the 15th) so that the lightning is invisible (see pic for illustration)

Tween between the 8th and 15th frame. 

10)  Click on the 15th layer, and click were it says "0 sec".  Now change the value to two seconds.  This means there will be a delay of 2 seconds on that frame.

Your done!  This is what you should end up with...

Of course u can add more flashes just by adding more frames, and more tweens, but I didn't really see the point in doing that because all you do is repeat some of the steps I already told you how to do :-)

Email me if you have any problems yusuf.o@gmail.com