Create a 3D Rainbow in Photoshop
First, I am starting out with a black background, so that it will be easier to see what we are doing. Create a new layer, and take the elliptical marquee tool and create a series of landscape ovals. Between 5-7 will be fine, depending if you want to use the entire ROYGBIV spectrum.
On the layer with the ovals, command click (ctrl-click on the PC) to select the contents of the layer. Then, go to 3D> Repousse> From Selection. The Repousse panel will come up and simply go to the preset that looks like a semi-circle and click okay. From here, our shape looks like a sideways rainbow. Simply use your Object Rotate Tool and click and drag to rotate the rainbow into the arching position that you would expect.
The, create a new layer above the 3D layer and change the blend mode to colorize. Now, what we are going to do here is use our brush to paint in the color spectrum in each separate arch. In mine, I did every color except indigo. Now, what we will do is go to the layers panel, and hold down alt/option and click in between our brush layer and the 3D layer to clip the colors to just the rainbow. If we don’t do that, when we change the background to a sky clue, if our colors bleed outside of the boundaries of the rainbow, it will color our sky as well.
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Next, we need to create some clouds around the base of the rainbow. It is easy to find cloud brushes on Brusheezy.com. They are free, and most of them are hi-res brushes that you can use in print applications. Download a set that you like, install it, and use white as your color for the clouds. Use varying clouds for realism, and scatter them around the base. Go to the 3D layer, create a mask and use a soft edged brush to fade some of the rainbow at the base to soften the effect.
Grab the gradient tool, pick a sky-blue to a darker sky blue, and create a blue gradient in your background layer.
You might also like:
- Creating Glow Effects in Your Designs With Photoshop Part 1
- Create 3D Gothic Text In Photoshop
- Create a Hand Written Neon Effect with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
- 3D Electric Type
- Make Hi-res Custom Brushes in Photoshop
- Colorful custom glow effects in Photoshop
- Multiple Masks on One Layer in Photoshop
4 Responses to “Create a 3D Rainbow in Photoshop”
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sounds nifty but I think you need an extended version of photoshop to do this. I’m still in CS3 and there is no 3D option.
Nifty! But my rainbow arches are hardly smooth as are yours. Played around with 3D settings to no avail, still getting angles in arch. Any suggestions?
It might be helpful to users if you mentioned what version of Photoshop you are using. That way people will know if they will be able to do it or not.
sounds nifty but I think you need an extended version of photoshop to do this. I’m still in CS3 and there is no 3D option.
Nifty! But my rainbow arches are hardly smooth as are yours. Played around with 3D settings to no avail, still getting angles in arch. Any suggestions?
Ahhh! Yes i may go back and add this to the tutorial. I got the same thing, but if you go back into Repousse and change “Draft” to “Best”, then the angles will smooth out.
It might be helpful to users if you mentioned what version of Photoshop you are using. That way people will know if they will be able to do it or not.