Glamorous Christmas Lights

Kick off the holiday season with a new technique that will glam up any picture of Christmas lights, giving it a glow like never before!

Step 1:

Open the desired picture in Photoshop and start by duplicating the layer. Give the layer an input mask and select Image > Apply Image. Hold down alt and click on the input mask. The photo should reveal the applied input mask and be black and white. Go to Image > Adjustments > Threshold and adjust so that the only white areas are the tiny Christmas lights from the picture.

When you are finished, select the brush tool and the color to #000000 and remove all of the areas you wish to exclude from the light effect.

Step 2:

Set the Blending Mode to Screen and duplicate the layer.

Step 3:

Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur and select anywhere between 100 and 170 works best. for fewer lights a larger streak is appropriate, however, the picture can become clouded when a large streak accompanies many detailed lights.

Select the other layer and apply the same motion blur, only change the Angle to -45.

Step 4:

To make the streaks more visible select each one individually and go to Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen.

Apply to the other layer then highlight both layers, right-click and select Duplicate Layers to intensify the effect.

The finished product will look as follows:

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