Creating the Rays Layer

All light is characterized by a certain degree of transparence. We are going to need a third layer to reproduce this characteristic, just for the rays of light. Rather than just silhouetting these rays of light, we are going to find a way around this and make use of a little known function of layers: the blend mode.

Let's start by recopying the background:

1. Click on the Layers option, then - right at the bottom of the menu, on Layer 1 - "Background".
   
   
The appearance of the image does not alter, but the word Background now appears in the title bar.


2. Press the keys Ctrl+A, then Ctrl+C, Ctrl+L and lastly Ctrl+D.
   
   
This series of keyboard short-cuts may seem rather vague. In effect, it selects the entire layer, copies it and pastes it into a new layer, then it deselects everything! This computer graphics expert is also the perfect secretary!


3. Rename the layer as Rays.