How to Add Rays Of Sunlight to a Photo in Photoshop

In this photo effects tutorial, we’ll learn how to easily add rays of sunlight to an image.
First Add A New Blank Layer. We’ll use this layer to hold our effect, so name the layer “sun rays”.
Set Your Foreground And Background Colors To Their Defaults.

Go up to the Filter menu in the Menu Bar, choose Render, then choose Clouds.
Convert layer into smart object.
Now Add A Layer Mask. I want the rays effect to appear only above the brighter sky areas, not below black areas.
Take a magic wand tool and select darker area. With the “sun rays” layer selected, Hold alt key & click on the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel.
Select sun rays layer and Apply The Radial Blur Filter.

This opens the Radial Blur dialog box. First, set the Blur Method on the left to Zoom, then set the Quality to Good.
When you’re ready, click OK to close out of the dialog box and apply the Radial Blur effect, transforming the clouds
into rays of light. The light rays should be coming from the sun, but instead, they’re a bit far to the right
Re-Open The Radial Blur Smart Filter And click and drag the blur center over a bit to the left to hopefully line it up this time with the sun.

Change The Blend Mode Of The Layer To Overlay. The Overlay blend mode is one of Photoshop’s contrast-
boosting blend modes. If we want even more effect simply duplicate the sun rays layer and change blending to softlight.

Here is before & after results

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