More Starbursts Than You Can Shake a Stick At

Starbursts/sunbursts have always looked cool to me. It probably stems from my affinity for all things Japanese, but they’re just so fun to make and use and look at. In this tutorial I’ve included about a billion different ways (or four) of making starbursts in Photoshop - each looking a bit different than the other.

So flip a coin, roll a die, or hope for divine intervention, and pick your path so we can get started already!

The Easy Way

By far the simplest way to create a Starburst. You might be out of luck if you don’t have Photoshop CS or higher.

Make a new document - you’d probably want a square. Mine was 400×400px. Select the Custom Shape Tool.

Load Symbols and select the Registration Target Shape.

Place it on your canvas. Hold down Shift to prevent distortion.

You might have to scale it up a bit if you don’t want the circular border. Hold down Shift and Alt while scaling to keep it in proportion and centered.

And here I’ve added a background colour and a radial gradient to the starburst in Blending Options. And we’re done! Told you it was easy.

Looks slick, right? But maybe you don’t want a starburst made of three dozen paper-thin lines. Head on over to the next page to learn how to make a ‘thicker’, simpler starburst by altering a flower shape.

Pages: 1 2 3 4

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This entry was written by Minty Ferret on Friday, September 28th, 2007 at 10:18 pm and is filed under Photoshop Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

14 Responses to “More Starbursts Than You Can Shake a Stick At”

koca kafalar on October 31st, 2007 at 7:02 am

thanks
Good tutorials
3dom on December 3rd, 2007 at 3:36 pm

So far it is the best starburst tutorial I’ve found. Glad you restored it after site crash. And thanks!
=)
Grateful on December 4th, 2007 at 5:51 pm

This tutorial saved me hours of work. I needed to make a round striped border and this did it in minutes. Thanks!
vale on January 28th, 2008 at 3:38 pm

Please can someone help me with registration target shape 2?:(
I have photoshop cs3 but can’t find this shape at all
thanks so much
Minty Ferret on January 28th, 2008 at 8:34 pm

Hi Vale - did you make sure to load up the Shapes folder? (check above). The target shape should look like a circle, not like a starburst at all. If you still need help finding it, feel free to take a screenshot of your work area and I’ll see what I can do!
jules on January 29th, 2008 at 2:57 am

Vale & Minty Ferret - The Registration shape is under Symbols in the Custom Shapes. I found it by accident. Hope this helps! Btw…Great tutorial!
Minty Ferret on January 29th, 2008 at 3:21 am

Oh jules! You’re right! I guess I made a mistake in the tutorial, thanks so much for pointing that out. I’ll have to fix that when I get a chance. Glad you liked it!
vale on February 6th, 2008 at 9:51 am

thank you sooo much Jules!I just found it and everything’s fine now!thank again for helping
Emma on February 14th, 2008 at 7:46 am

oh that’s ok, I figured it out. hehe. thank you for the tutorial
junaid on February 28th, 2008 at 10:19 pm

i tryed to find this tool, the registration 2, but i still cant find it, wheres SYMBOLs ?
plz reply soon
Minty Ferret on February 28th, 2008 at 10:26 pm

I haven’t had the time to add in the extra screenshot - check it out here:
http://mintyferret.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/starburst2.gif

(Instead of choosing Shapes, choose Symbols)
Sampigeo on April 6th, 2008 at 2:27 am

Thank you , it is cool
Kerry Webster » Orange Starburst on June 9th, 2008 at 10:59 pm

[…] Want to know how I learned to create this Orange Sunburst? Check here […]
Kerry Webster » How to Create a Starburst Graphic on June 11th, 2008 at 5:02 am

[…] for tutorial from the following sites: Minty Ferret […]