I received so many great tutorials (especially Good-Tutorials.com), it’s about time I start to re-pay my debt. Here is a tutorial for an abstract “refract” effect.

1) Open a new image

2) Press “d” to reset colors, and go to Filter — Render — Clouds

3) Filter — Render — Fibers. I used the following settings (you can change the randomization if you desire):

Then you get:

4) Filter — Distort — Polar Coordinates

5) Filter — Sharpen — Sharpen

6) Filter — Distort — Ripple

7) Change the color and saturation: Image — Adjustments — Hue/Saturation (Ctrl — U)

8) I decide to add more variance, so I went to Image — Adjustments — Levels (Ctrl — L) and used the following settings:

Voila! If you want, you can see a larger image.