It's high time I should contribute my little piece of power to you all. This is a popular, and fairly easy tutorial if you know your way through your tools in photoshop. This Tutorial applies only for Photoshop 7.0, 8.0, and Elements 2.0, and is only availible for 5.0 and 6.0 if you know your way around the tools.

1. Open your new blank image. Make it 500 px by 500px.
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2. Press D on your keyboard to make sure your colors are set to the default black and white. Then, go to Filters -> Render -> Clouds
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3. Now, go to Filter -> Render -> Difference Clouds.
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4. Then, on your keyboard, press Ctrl+I, to invert the colors.
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5. Now, Press Ctrl+L to open your layer options. Then move around the left black arrow, and the middle gray arrow until the clouds become nice and thin, enough to your liking.
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6. The last step is to color it. Press Ctrl+U, and then check the Colorize Box, and push the levers around until you get it to the color you'd like.
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Here's how my image came out.
(IMG:http://img43.exs.cx/img43/8107/Final2.jpg)

You can change the color to whatever you want. Keep in mind that the lightning looks and paths are completely random. So even if your lightning isn't bent exactly the same as mine doesn't mean you got it wrong. I hope you guys had fun doing this tutorial. If you want the lightning to go in a defined path, then you could always draw it by hand?

Finally something quick and easy. Great to know how to do this, too.

(IMG:http://img42.exs.cx/img42/1153/randomlightningcopy.gif)

I see this tutorial on many sites but this is a more advanced version, the ones on the site are only 1 bolt most of the time

Yup, our lives are dedicated to informing the public.

If I post something here my name appears under every main page topic XD