This tutorial will show you how you can add aurora or northern lights to you night photos. Some great photographs of northern lights by Sigurdur H Stefnisson are available here..

Step 1.) Find your background photo. I’ll be using this factory shot at night. Then go to Layer > New > Layer and press OK

Step 2.) Choose your Brush Tool and draw something like this in your new layer

Step 3.) Go to Filter > Distort > Wave , and play around with the wavelength to get desired result.

Step 4.) Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, and play around with the radius to get desired result.

Step 5.) Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur, and play around with the angle and distance to get desired result.

Step 6.) Change the layer opacity to around 40%

Step 7.) Now add some contrast to your aurora using Image > adjusments > Curves

Step 8.) You can Transform your aurora using Edit > Transform > Perspective to make it looks better…and, here’s my final image..

You can change the color of your aurora quickly by using image hue/saturation.

Originally written: 12/09/06

See also: Photoshop Tutorials

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