Here’s what our image looks like so far.

Step 11 – Add abstract colors to the background

Create a new layer above the clouds layer then set the blending mode to color. Now we can paint in this layer with any color and it will only affect the color of the layers below.

In the swatches palette (Window > Swatches), click on the menu then choose any one of the PANTONE CMYK swatches.

Now you have the yellow, magenta, and cyan colors easily accessible form your swatches palette.

Select the brush tool. On the option bar at the top, you can select the brush size, hardness, and opacity. I recommend starting with a 50% opacity to paint.

Select any of the first three colors in the swatches palette then begin painting.

You can overlap two colors to create other colors such as teal. Remember that you can adjust the size, hardness, and opacity of your brush for different results. Here is what we ended up with and how we got the results.

Step 12 – Add a swirling beam of light

Create a new layer inside a new group. This group will be used to store all the special effects we’ll be adding on later. Select Group 1 then click on the button to create a new group above it. Then, click on the button to add a new layer inside Group 2.

Select the pen tool then apply the settings in the option bar as shown in the image below.

Create a curved path similar to the image below.

Select the brush tool and adjust the settings. Use the settings as shown below but adjust the master diameter setting to change the size of the brush. The size of this brush will determine the thickness of the beam of light. We used a brush size of 30 px on the high resolution file used for this tutorial. But if you are working on a low resolution file (ex. 800 x 600 pixels), then you should use a smaller brush size such as 7 pixels.

Make sure that you have the new layer in Group 2 selected. In the paths palette (Window > Paths), right click on the work path then choose stroke path.

In the stroke path dialog, select brush from the drop down menu and enable simulate pressure.

This is what our image looks like so far with the swirling beam of light. However, it doesn’t look like it is swirling around the model. In the next step, we’ll mask out certain areas to make it look like it is swirling around the model.