I've had several people ask me how to do the starburst effect in Photoshop. In this tutorial, I'll explain how to do just that.

1. Open a new document in Photoshop with a black background. I used 400x400. Take out your brush tool and choose a 50 pixel brush with a hardness of 100. Make certain that the brush settings are set to Normal and the opacity to 100. In the center of your background, make one dot by clicking once.

2. Next, apply the polar coordinates filter by going to Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates. Make certain that the setting is "Polar to rectangular" and click ok. You should have something that looks like this:



3. Now, flip the canvas by going to Image>Rotate Canvas>90degrees CW. You'll have something like this:



4. Apply the Wind Filter by going to Filter>Stylize>Wind. Make sure that the "Wind" and "From the Right" options are chosen and click OK. Hold down the control key and hit F twice to apply the filter two more times. You should now have something like this:



5. Go to Image>Rotate Canvas>90 degrees CCW, and you will get this:



6. Apply the Polar coordinates filter by going to Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates. Choose "Rectangular to Polar" and click OK. You should have this:



7. Now you can add some color if you want to. Go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation. Choose the "Colorize" box and adjust the sliders until you have a color you like.



That's all there is to it! You can decide how big you want the original dot. Make it bigger, make it smaller. It's up to you. Once you have mastered this technique, you can apply the same effect to other things and get the impression of light coming from behind an object. Have fun with it!

If you have questions or comments please let me know.