Adding Spiral Beams around your objects really gives a 3D sense to your objects. We will see on this tutorial how you can add these beams around any object you may want to give depth to using Photoshop CS4. For the purposes of this tutorial we suggest using a 3D object like this sphere but any object would do.

1. The first thing we want to do is create a new layer.

2. Next we will open our path’s panel and choose the ellipse tool. Once you pick the ellipse tool go to the tool’s options bar on the top toolbar and click on the middle icon named Path, you can easily identify it by hovering over with your cursor on the icons of the toolbar. This will turn your cursor into a little pen tool. With this tool chosen draw a very thin wide oval near the base of your object.

3. Next we need to choose our direct selection tool. This is placed usually just over the ellipse tool, on the lower portion of the tools toolbar and is marked with a black arrow. Click on it and select the path of the oval object you just designed, this will bring up 4 anchors. We want to add 2 more anchors to these, so we will go to the Pen tool and from the available tools choose the add anchor tool. Click on it and create 2 extra anchors just on the edges of your object on the areas highlighted.

4. Once we have all 6 anchors set, we will go back to the direct selection tool and we will choose the anchors that would stand lie behind our object and delete them. This will give us a flat C running around in the front side of our object.

5. Next we will grab this path and move it down to the new path button. This is placed on the bottom toolbar of the paths panel. Once done right click on it and duplicate that path. We will now edit the duplicate path we just created. We will select the path that runs on the left side of our object and delete it.

6. Next we will grab our brush tool, which is placed on the top side of the tools toolbar.
Click on it and go to brush options, we will set the brush diameter to 7pxls and set hardness to 100%. Next click on the brush options dialogue box, which is placed just on top of the paths panel you have running and turn shape dynamics ON.

7. Next right click on the duplicate path and select stroke path. Choose brush and simulate pressure. This will create a beam that whirls around the object.

8. Now we will switch to the original path and again on the path selection tool. Select the paths of the swirl we created before, hold down the shift key and hit the upper arrow key a few times so the path will move upwards. Once done we will replicate the stroke path steps as described on step 7. This will create another swirl. Repeat this until you get the desired number of swirls.

9. Finally we want to give our swirls an angle. For this go back to the Layers mode, remember we were working on the paths mode until now, and select the swirls layer. Right click on it after you select it and select skew and give your swirls an angle by pulling the top right corner a bit up and the bottom left down, which will give them a cool moving effect.

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