Photoshop Sunstar & Lightrays Creation Tutorial

I was really struggling with light rays in my landscape edits until this tutorial showed me exactly how to build them layer by layer. The sunstar effect looks so natural it’s hard to believe it was done in Photoshop.

The focus stacking merge method alone was worth the price, and I finally got a clean blend on a shot I'd given up on. It's a straightforward walkthrough, nothing padded.

The focus stacking section alone was worth it — I finally got a sharp foreground-to-background merge on a mountain shot that always turned mushy before. His lightray technique is a bit fiddly at first, but once it clicks the results look way more natural than my old dodge-and-burn approach.