graphic like exploremarsnow.org

I'm new to photoshop. I'm using 7.0. I want to design a graphic similar to the one at the homepage of exploremarsnow.org. The graphic I'm speaking of is at the very top of the page just above the text "exploremarsnow.org" I don't care about the planet part of the graphic but I want to be able to do something similar to the small light beside the planet and then the lines coming out with the graphic starting out with the light and then fading. Does this make sense. I have no idea where to begin. I appreciate any help and suggestions.

John

Hi.
This post should actually be in the new to photoshop section but I will still try to answer it...
Uhm this isnt' that easy but I'll give it a shot...or the thing you want to do isn't hard but the tricky part is explaining it :P

Well imo you should start with making a # <- thing that looks like that.
But with longer and with more lines...
Just make it straight horizontal and vertical.
Then go to edit and take transform object or something like that...
Not sitting infront of a computer with photoshop right now...
Then tweek a bit to the right....
just the bottom part...
Then after that use the lasso tool and make a circle at the bottom where you want it to fade.
Press Alt + D for feather and put something like 20 in the box.
Then hit delete...it will delete and fade the lines so it should look something like that...
The light:
Just make another circle and color it white/yellowish...
And go to filter -> blur and blur it a couple of times.
copy the layer of the light you just made and go to layer options and try some of the different options there...lighten might work.
I know that this wasn't that good "tutorial" but it's a bit hard without a photoshop infront of you...
If someone hasn't answered this when I get home I could explain it a bit better...

thanks for responding. A few questions. When I got to lightening the layer. I copied the layer like you said. I chose lighten and whatever percentage I chose nothing happened.

Yeah it depends a bit on the image you are trying to use the options with and when I didn't have photoshop I couldn't check which one looked the best.
Try another one of those options maybe there is something that might give a little effect but it's hard to say which one because as I said it depends on the image.

Didn't actually think you would understand any of my explanations :P

I think nothing changed because the layer is locked. Can you tell me how to unlock it?

Is it the background layer?
I think it's always locked.
The other ones can be locked/unlocked if you press the little square on the left side of the layer.

Is it the background? I guess. I just chose duplicate layer and hit okay. Should i have chose something else?

Oh I might have forgotten something that could help...
Take the light layer, copy it...and on the second one go to filters -> blur -> gaussian blur and put something like 2.5...
Then try the different layer options...

I'll try this later this afternoon. Thanks for your help. I'll let you know how it turns out.

well - is there a small chainlink near the little eye in the layers panel? If it was the bg - then more than likely the duplicate will be locked too.

oh - and that site is so cool I like the marshabitat thing