Making a Zoom Trail in Photoshop

In this tutorial, you’ll learn the secret behind creating a Zoom Trail in Photoshop. This is an improvement on a method I created for a book I helped author. My image was on the cover!

The method is actually quite simple, but you will be using some important Photoshop techniques and tools to create it:

• Making a “planet” out of any disk
• Using a radial Gradient
• Using a Blending Mode
• Making a Merged Visibles Layer
• Using a Single Column Marquee
• Modifying a Selection
• “Jumping” a Selection to a new layer
• Using a Transformation
• Using a Filter to distort.
• Using a Layer Mask to create translucency

1. Make the planet. For this, choose any bit of artwork or even a photo. It doesn’t have to be round to begin with. A colorful image will work best here. I’m beginning with this image to the right.
   
   Make a new layer for your background and put it underneath the image layer in the Layers palette.
   
   Use your Elliptical Marquee to make a selection on your image. After you’ve begun to drag, hold Shift to make your ellipse a circle.

Ctrl-Shift-I to Inverse the selection. Hit the Delete key. Ctrl-D to deselect. You have a disk on your background! Save your file.

But it’s not planetary! Let’s fix that.

• Make a new layer above your disk layer.
• Ctrl-click the disk layer to load it as a selection.
• Choose the Gradient Tool and, in the Options, choose Radial Gradient and Foreground > Background for the gradient.
• Click the gradient and edit it as I have done here. I’ve added a gray color stop and adjusted the midpoint between the gray and the white.
  
• Drag this gradient across your disk, beginning at the spot I’ve indicated to the right.
• Take a large soft Brush and white, set spacing to 25% and flow to 25%. Now run this brush around just outside of your selection at the bottom right, just where the arrow above happens to be pointing! This will give the disk a nice underglow. Ctrl-D to deselect.
• Put this layer into Hard Light Blending Mode. This is in the Layers palette where it, by default, says Normal.
  

2. Make a Merged Visibles Layer for your planet. We need this whole planet, which is now a disk and a Hard Light layer, onto one layer. So we will make a Merged Visibles layer.

• Turn off the visibility for any other layer, including background. Just the planet visible.
• Ctrl-Alt-Shift-N-E. That is, hold Ctrl, Alt, and Shift, as you type N and then E.
  “CASNE” is how I remember it.
• Label this layer Planet.
• Turn visibility back on for your Background layer and turn off the visibility for the layers that made up your planet.

3. Ready… Set…

• Be sure your planet layer is selected.
• Choose the Single Column Marquee tool. It will be under your Elliptical Marquee.
• Click this tool close to the center of your planet.
• Select > Modify > Expand. Choose 2 pixels. (This step is optional, but doing this will give you something to hold onto in the next step.)
• Ctrl-J to Jump a copy of the selection to a new layer. Ctrl-D to deselect. Label this layer Trail.

• Click Enter to finish the Transformation.

5. Now we’ll shape the trail.

• Ctrl-T again. This time, rotate it so that it’s straight-up vertical. Hold Shift after you begin rotating and it’ll snap to 90 degrees.
• Hold Ctrl while you’re in Transform mode and drag the lower corners in to the center. Enter to complete the Transformation.

• Duplicate this layer, in case you need to have a copy of it. Turn off the visibility eye for one of them.
• Working on the Trail, Filter > Distort > Shear. You work with the curve and move the points around, looking at your preview screen. Play around till you like the look of your trail and click OK.

6. Put the Trail into place.

• You will likely need to do a Transform Rotation to get the trail turned properly and use the Move tool to get it up against the planet. Make it a bit bigger than you might think. You’re going to trim it up in the next step.
• Click the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. Wherever you paint on here in black the layer will be hidden. Wherever you paint on here in white, the layer will show.
  
  I want the tail of the trail to fade off into the starry night. And I definitely do not want that overlappy ugliness against the planet.
• Choose the Gradient tool and the Linear option. Be sure that the mask is highlighted in the Layers palette, meaning that you’re going to work on it, and not the layer. Black > white will work fine. Drag this across the canvas.
• Next, use a soft Brush with black to paint away that excess trail that’s hiding too much of the planet.