How did I do this ?

[tuilorraine]

It was so long ago, I've forgotten but I need to do it again and I can't work out how I did it. I thought I did it in photoshop but perhaps it was in illustrator.
It was something that produced these electrical starburst thingies  as in this image:

[Silkrooster]

Look like tree roots.

You could draw out one branch, then duplicate and rotate around the center.

[tuilorraine]

I'm sure it was something far simpler than that. Like a filter or brush.

[tuilorraine]

I wonder if it might have been a brush that I used once with one colour and then again on the same spot with another colour. If so that brush is not available  now.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

[c.pfaffenbichler]

One can create a »frizzly« brush tip based on a part of the clouds filter and then use that to create a »knot« of those lines.

[melissapiccone]

That's a pretty clever way to create a very cool brush

[tuilorraine]

That looks amazing and exactly what I wanted but I'm sure I never did anything that complicated to create it. I only do simple stuff. Just wish I could remember what I did do. I suppose it was some kind of preset brush once but has been removed from CC.

[Leslie Moak Murray]

It looks to me like a magenta brush with a deep blue inner shadow applied.

[tuilorraine]

Well one good thing that's come of this. I made myself do a few tutorials about creating a custom brush and I made one of my signature. Next step is to try that thing with the clouds.

[Trevor.Dennis · Accepted solution]

Black to white gradient

Render Difference Clouds.  Repeat a few times while holding down the Alt key to get a decent effect.

Use levels to do the Photoshop Lightning effect

Erase the excess and feather the edges, and define brush preset

A bit of Size Jitter

Maximum Angle jitter

Maximum Roundness jitter

Set the foreground and background colours

And Maximum Foreground/Background jitter

Check Apply Per Tip

Check Build Up

Stamp down with the mouse, and hold the left click till done

It would be good if we had flip jitter, to flip the brush on a 'per tip' basis, but I don't know ho to do that.

If you wanted a radial gradient, just clip it on a layer above.

This is a bit better.  I added a wee bit of Scatter jitter, and Checked Both Axis, and that seems to have broken the pattern repetition.

[tuilorraine]

Gosh! Thank-you Trevor.Dennis for going to all this effort. I will follow every step. I'm up to this.