Quick Photoshop Lighting Tips for Photographers

JonGos — Fri, 30 May 2008 19:04:54 +0000

Are you new to Photoshop and looking for ways to enhance photos without having to stress yourself out reading hundreds of tutorials. These four techniques are no brainers that will make your designs “pop”. All of them are also ways to fake more advanced techniques. Each of them are simple and only require about five steps each.

Faux Posterization

Open your image and duplicate the background layer (which should be your image).

Under “Layer Style” change the topmost layers Blend Option value to “Vivid Light”.

Set the Opacity of the topmost layer to “50%”. done the resulting image should be pretty high contrast and washed out.

If you so choose change your Image>>Mode setting to grayscale for a posterized black and white version.

Brilliant Color and Haze

Open your image and duplicate the background layer (which should be your image).

Under “Layer Style” change the topmost layers Blend Option value to “Multiply” and Opacity to “75%”.

Duplicate the background layer again. Drag this layer above the last layer.

Set the Blend Option value to “Hard Light”.

Apply Filter >> Blur >> Gaussian Blur.

High Contrast

Open your image and duplicate the background layer (which should be your image).

Go to Image >> Adjustments >> Black and White (click here to see). Don’t worry so much about the settings here, just leave them at the default settings and click “OK”.

Set the black and white Layer to Hard Light. Instant high contrast (bright whites, dark blacks). Duplicate the black and white layer again for an even stronger effect.

Faux Tone Mapping

Open your image and duplicate the background layer (which should be your image).

Select Filter >> Other >> High Pass and use a setting of 50px. Keep in mind, the lower the setting here the stronger the effect.

Change the topmost setting to “Linear Burn” and change the opacity to 50%.

Keep in mind these techniques aren’t the best ways to do this, but if you just want to spice up your photos and have no interest in truly learning Photoshop then they might work for you!

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Creating Energy Spheres in Photoshop

JonGos — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:39:46 +0000

For this tutorial you’ll want to find a photo of someone doing something that looks a bit larger than life. I used this photo that I found at the stock photo website Stock Exchange. For this tutorial you’ll need a photo that you want to manipulate and some special brush sets which I downloaded from here.

This will be the final result.

1. Download the brush set and install it.
2. Now I’ll show how to take a child with a big imagination and turn him into the powerful being he imagine himself to be.
3. We’ll start by creating a new layer on top of our original and filling it with black. Next we want to select Filter >> Render >> Lighting Effects >> Lens Flare
4. Use the 105mm Prime with the Brightness setting of your choice.

5. This will create a bright flash. Move it to the point where you want the ‘energy ball’ to appear.
6. You may notice that when you move it, you can see the edges of the layer. To rectify this, select the layer and add a ‘Layer Mask’.
7. Select default colors (white and black). With the layer mask selected, use the Gradient Tool >> Radial Gradient >> Reverse and drag from the center outwards. This will mask everything in a sphere around the center.
8. Set both of these layers to the ‘Hard Light’ setting.
9. I like to use the Image >> Adjustments >> Photo Filter to make the colors “pop”. I also used this setting to make the lens flare a bluish color. There are other ways to do this so experiment with your options.
10. Using the Brush set we installed earlier we want to apply them to the energy balls. I used the color black, with the layer’s Blend Options set to ‘Overlay’.
11. With this layer selected, set the Layer Style settings like so:
12. Using the same technique that we used in Step 7, we want to mask the edges of our brush layers.
13. To create the ‘arc of light’ we’ll use paths. Select the ‘Ellipse Tool’ and change it from ‘Shape layers’ to ‘Paths’. Now, draw a large circle or ellipse that includes both energy flares.
14. Once the arc is drawn we want to stroke it (no jokes please). Select a brush that’s very small, maybe about a brush with a 5px diameter and use the color white. Go to ‘Paths’ right click on the selected path, and select ‘Stroke Path’. Check the ’simulate pressure’ option, this will give the ring a bit of perspective with a heavier stroke on one side and a lighter stroke on the opposite side.

15. Repeat this step twice. Each time use a different brush setting that is bigger than the one before it. I started with the 5px brush, then I used a 45px brush followed by a 100px brush. Each time use a different color. The topmost (bigger) arc should be set to ‘Linear Dodge (Add)’ with an opacity of 35%. The middle layer should be set to ‘Overlay’ and the original (the white one) should be set to ‘Linear Dodge (Add)’.
16. I grouped these together then, using the technique from Step 7 again, I use layer masking to block one half of the sphere I created.
17. To create the energy ‘tendrils’ that are leaping from the arc. Duplicate the grouped folder from Step 16. Then merge the group or folder into one layer. Select Filter >> Liquify and distort the arc to look like it should for your image. Secondly, we’ll select Filter >> Distort >> Ripple and tweak it to look a bit more like electricity.
18. Now we’re done. Outside of some techniques that I used to make the image more polished, this completes the tutorial.

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Quick Photoshop Lighting Tips for Photographers

Creating Energy Spheres in Photoshop