How To Create A Bright Light Effect In Photoshop

Get ready to relight your photos in Photoshop. I'm amazed at how many people tell me they have never heard of the actually powerful LIGHTING Furnishings filter.

In this Photoshop Tutorial we are going to utilize the Lighting effects filter to simulate real lighting. This filter has a lot of powerful features. I'll show you lot how to utilize them in this tutorial. Nosotros are going to d 2 projects. The first is adding colored gels in Photoshop and the 2nd is relighting a scene and adding texture. This is as well role ane of a iii parter on the Lighting furnishings filter, look for the other 2 parts here on PhotoshopCAFE. Please watch the video for more detailed explanations and actress tips. This written component will serve as a great reference for you.

This is part 1 of a series. Part 2 is here.

Lighting effects isn't working?

I have received a lot of messages about different things not working, here are the common solutions.

Brand sure you are in RGB mode and 8bit color. (under Image>Mode)
If you don't see the controls, press Cmd/Ctrl+H
If its non working try going to Preference>Functioning and make sure Use Graphics Processor is turned on.
Sometimes y'all have to quite Photoshop and go dorsum in when changing texture channels, equally it has a few petty bugs.

Making Colored Gels in Photoshop

Here is a photo I grabbed from Adobe Stock. Lets showtime with a double gelled spotlight upshot

Step 1.

Choose Filter>Render>Lighting furnishings
(note, you need to be in RGB mode and eight bit for this to work, y'all can discover this nether Image>Mode)

At that place are 3 types of lights bachelor

This is spot which is a spotlight / floodlight

Second low-cal is a indicate calorie-free. This is a like a lightbulb in space.

3rd is an space. This is a directional light, similar the dominicus.

Footstep 2

Under the presets at the top, choose a Triple Spotlight. These presets are quick ways to become started and some of them are quite cool looking.

You lot'll see this

Pace 3

Zoom out only using the zoom settings in the lesser corner, or Alt+scroll wheel on your mouse.

You can drag on the points to change the size brightness and angle of the light.

Adjust the hotspot for a softer falloff.

Step 4

Click on colour to add some color to the light.

Drag inside the square swatch to choose the color. Information technology works just the the color picker in Photoshop.

Step 5

Arrange the intensity to choose the effulgence of the calorie-free

Step half-dozen

You can brighten the rest of the photo with the ambient slider. This adjusts the overall brightness of the unabridged epitome.

Stride 7

Choose a different light to adjust. You lot can select by clicking the light in the Lights panel.

Pace 8

Let'due south choose a complimentary color. A overnice orange this fourth dimension.

Stride 9

For the 3rd light, you can hide it by clicking the eye icon next to it in the lights panel, or select it and press the trash icon to remove information technology.

In this instance, let'south continue it but lower the intensity and then nosotros can still come across some of the chalk in the eye of the paradigm. (the smoke event is made by throwing chalk).

And the effect looks like we lit the sides with colored lights, or colored gels on spotlights. Let'due south continue..

Lighting a photo with a spotlight and realistic texture in Photoshop

Let'southward step it upwards a bit more with another photo from Adobe Stock. We will add a dramatic spotlight.

Stride one

Choose Filter>render>Lighting effects

This time cull Soft spotlight from the presets.

Step two

Resize the position the light so ship the beam downward from the left side.

Here are the settings Im using

Stride 3

Increase the ambience until you tin can just see the background, but its still dark enough that the spotlight has a strong outcome.

(This is a corking pull a fast one on to simplify a busy image and provide a squeamish area to add together text for designers.)

Stride 4

Now for some magic.

Under texture, cull ruby. Nosotros are now loading the scarlet aqueduct into the lighting effects (We volition practice Manner more than with textures in upcoming tutorials on this, very soon).

Set it to the lowest value of 1.

Await at how it popped the texture on the butt. This is more realistic considering when you side lite something (called raking low-cal) it casts tiny shadows and pops texture.

And the result.

Please come dorsum before long I am adding 2 more parts:

Lighting a portrait is here

as well as how to practice crazy realistic and 3D looking textures with this filter.

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Colin

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If you similar these techniques and yous would like to dive deeper into Photoshop, I have just launched an in-depth Photoshop Grade. Its called Photoshop Secrets: Photoshop 2020 for Digital Photographers, Check it out hither