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Adding Realistic Sun Rays

In this tutorial, we'll learn to add realistic sun rays or sun beams to a photograph to add dramatic effect to the photo. This technique works especially well in dark rooms where there is a window or photos where there is a lot of shadows with a single light source entering the dark area.

1. Open the photo that you want to add sun rays to in Photoshop.

2. Add a new layer. Title it "Sun Ray".
3. Use the Polygonal Lasso Selection Tool to select the area that will be the path of the sun rays.

4. Select the color for your light as your foreground color. In this case, I kept it simple by choosing white as the foreground color.
5. Select the Paint Bucket Tool and fill in the selected area with white.

6. Lower the opacity for the Sun Ray layer to make it transparent. Find a transparency that looks believable with the photograph.

7. Goto Filter > Blur > Gausian Blur. Change values to the following:

8. Click OK and you should have something similar to the effect below.

9. Click the Add Layer Mask button to add a Layer Mask to the "Sun Ray" layer.

10. Select the Gradient Tool and choose black to white as your gradient.
11. Make sure that the Gradient option is a Linear Gradient.
12. With the Layer Mask active, drag the gradient toward the light source.

13. You should now have your new sun ray added to the scene.