Glowing Box Photoshop Tutorial

Since I work with the web on a regular basis I find myself using Adobe's Creative Suite every day and yet I know there's so much that I don't know. That being the case I try and make a point of running through a tutorial once or twice a week to pick up some new skills and better understand how all of the tools work.

So this morning I was delighted to see in the twitterverse this tutorial from six revisions going around.

I found it to be interesting and it appeared challenging enough for me. After working through it, I would grade myself about a B on this project. I couldn't figure out Step 17 and I feel that my little glowing orbs didn't come out too well. Nonetheless, I'm happy to have given it a try.

Things that I learned from this tutorial? How to use the pen tool to cut out a shape, how to make things glow with a nice gaussian blur and how to make clouds come out from behind something. If you want, I have the psd file here.