Abstract images can be very interesting, or not, depends on the eye of the watcher, of course, but the best part is that you can achieve astonishing results with only a few minutes of work. After all, when creating new things in Photoshop, the post processing part takes up most of the time, but let’s cut that talking and start working!

1. Create a new document, using any settings you want. Mine are the same as usual…

2. Select the Gradient Tool and change its settings as you can see in the screenshot below (click the thumbnail to enlarge).

3. Create a new layer and draw as many gradients as you need until you get a result to suit your taste (check mine below).

4. Next, apply Filter>Artistic>Plastic Wrap using its default settings, then Filter>Brush Strokes>Angled Strokes, again using the defaults.

5. Now, we duplicate the layer we worked on so far and apply Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates, with Polar to Rectangular as setting. Change the blending mode of this layer to Lighten.

6. Duplicate the current layer and then flip it vertically. As you can see below, this looks interesting already…

7. Now, switch to the original layer, duplicate it and use Filter>Distort>Twirl. Press Ctrl+F to apply this filter at least once more.

8. At last, go to Edit>Fade Twirl, use about 50-75% as setting, and then move this layer above all the others and change its blending mode to Vivid Light and adjust its opacity too, if needed. You can play with all layer settings here, and then grab the resulting image and move on to the post-effects part…but that’s up to you!