In this tutorial we will be making use of some different light effects to create a really cool set of glowing rings.

If you like this tutorial, you should definitely check out our rundown of 20 Amazing Photoshop Light Effects to continue to get your fix of this sort of thing.

As with any tutorial, be sure to following the directions initially but always go back and try it again using your own flair and ideas. The goal here is for you to learn a new technique that you can make your own.

What you’re designing

Here is the final image of what you will learn to create by following this tutorial.

Step 1

Create a new document. Any size will work. I did 950×750. Then fill the background with a solid black.

Step 2

Using the Ellipse Tool, create a single circle (any size is fine). Set the Fill percentage to 0% and add a 1px white stroke to the circle. This gives us a vector circle stroke that’s easily scalable and easy to add effects to. Checkout the specific settings for the Stroke effect below.

Step 3

Next, go back to the the Layer Style panel for the circle and add an Outer Glow and an Inner Glow with the following settings (note that the glow color for both is just solid white).

Step 4

Now duplicate the circle layer and resize each circle. Create both large and small circles and try not to have any two circles that are the same. The easiest way to resize each circle is to just do Cmd+T/Ctrl+T to transform them. You should end up with something like this.

Step 5

It’s time to add some color. For this next step you will need to create a separate layer for each color you want to add (to keep things flexible).

Select the Brush Tool and set the Master Diameter to something fairly large (I’m using 360px) and then set the Hardness to 0%.

Select any color for the brush. The best colors are bright (almost neon) hues. We’ll start with a blue.

Begin doing large strokes that cover just certain parts of the circles. You should have something like this.

Next, set the Blending Mode for that layer to Overlay and the Opacity to 50%. Doing this will apply the color to just the circles and glows.

Now just duplicate this step with different colors. It will work best if you keep it to about 4 colors. Too many more than that and it will start looking a bit muddy.

After adding the colors, you should have something similar to this.

Step 6

This next step helps add some depth and makes it feel a bit larger. What we’ll be doing is adding a soft glow behind the circles. This effect is pretty much identical to step 5 in terms of adding large chunks of color.

First, create a new empty layer right about the black background layer.

Next, create large “blobs” of color with a large brush (500px Master Diameter, 0% Hardness). Here is a layer will yellow.

Reduce the Opacity on the layer to about 15% and then create a couple of additional layers with new colors and set those to 15% Opacity as well.

You should have something that looks similar to this.

Step 7

Finally, to give the piece some texture we will use Photoshop’s Cloud filter.

Create a new empty layer below your circles but above the background colors. Make sure your foreground and background colors are set to black and white and then go to Filter > Render > Clouds to fill the layer will clouds. Set the Opacity of this layer to about 15%.

8. And there you have it! As you can see, the benefit to keeping all of our colors and circles on separate layers is we can now easily go back and make adjustments and see the changes immediately. Feel free to move circles around, add colors, reduce opacities, etc etc.

Feel free to download the PSD for this tutorial to pick it apart a bit more. Also, be sure to post your completion (and varations) of this to the Designerside Flickr Group!