Creating Starburst glints of light in Photoshop

Here is a nice effect that looks like the sun glinting off a metallic or shiny surface. This starburst effect even includes a little lens flare. A tasteful replacement for the sometimes over used lens flare filter.

1. First thing we need to do is create a new document, 600 X 600 pixels.
a. Set my background to black to that you can see the white glint that you will prepare.
2. Create a new layer and choose the line tool (Hidden under the rectangle shape tool in the toolbox)
a. Choose 2 pixels and the draw pixel option from the options bar
3. Set white as your foreground color
4. Draw a short dash (A) (About 170 pixels). Hold the Shift key to constrain the rotation to a horizontal line
5. Choose Filter>Blur>Motion Blur
6. Add enough distance to get a nice tapered look.
a. Make sure the angle matches the angle of the line.
7. Duplicate the Layer with the dash on it
8. Press Ctrl (Windows+T) for free transform
9. Rotate the dash while holding down shift to constrain the rotation
10. Choose both dash Layers and press Ctrl/Cmd+E to merge them (On version CS and earlier, choose the top layer and press Ctrl/Cmd+E to merge with the layer beneath) Careful not to merge with background
11. Duplicate the merged dash layer (Ctrl +J)
12. Press Ctrl/Cmd+T for free transform
13. Rotate 45 deg, grab a corner point and scale toward the center to make the new star smaller (hold down alt+shift to scale from center and constrain)
14. You now have your starburst and you may be happy right here.
15. Create a new Layer
16. Grab the elliptical marquee tool (circular selection tool)
17. Create a selection over the starburst
18. Choose Edit>Stroke Choose a 1 pixel white stroke
19. Deselect
20. Filter>Blue>Gaussian Blur to soften the effect
21. Merge the 3 layers together by selecting them and Ctrl+E to merge.