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.