Tuesday, January 17, 2012

How to make a Light effect on Photoshop

LightEffect20Light Effect On A Model Light is a cool subject to talk about. After reading some articles about light effect, I decided to write a tutorial showing how to create a very spectacular light effect around a model. Before that, I will show you a quick technique to retouch portrait and bring new look on it, step by step




Step 1: Open a new document, I used 800x600 pixels and look for a model photo on the internet, this is the one I used:
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After downloading, place it on your document. Now we will start to retouch it!
Step 2: As you can see, it is a bit dark so we should make it brighter first. Duplicate your photo by pressing Ctrl-J and change its blending mode to Screen. Simple, right?
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 It is now better. Merge down this layer donw by pressing Ctrl-E. After that, duplicate it again and go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and use a value of 4.5 pixels
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Step 3: Change the blending mode to Overlay and merge it down. The model now looks wonderful!
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 Step 4: Next we will add some light on her. Use the Pen tool and make some point around the dark areas of the model, don't need to be so exact
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 Step 5: Convert this path into a selected area, you can save this area for later use by going to Select>Save Selection
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Step 6: Create a new layer and go to Filter>Render>Clouds and Filter>Artistic>Plastic Wrap, just use the default values
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Now change its blending mode to Color Dodge. Your photo may look a bit different:
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Step 7: In the next steps, we will add light effect on the model. Use the Pen tool to draw some curves on her
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Step 8: Reset your colors by pressing D and invert them by pressing X. Choose the Brush tool and go to Window>Brushes to open the Brushes panel. Pick a small brush (about 5 pixels) with 0% hardness and tick on Shape Dynamics. Create a new layer, choose the Pen tool again, right click and choose Stroke Path. Make sure you tick on the Simulate Pressure before pressing OK
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A small curve, thinner at two ends appear like this:
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Step 9: Repeat step 8 again but this time we also tick on the Scattering checkbox (make sure you make it on a new layer)
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After choosing Stroke Path, we get
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Now we can delete the path by pressing Enter. Double click on your two new created layers to open Layer Style dialog box. Use Outer Glow as following:
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Use the Eraser tool to delete some light areas, the glowing light seems to surround her. After this step, we get:
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Step 10: Make our light effect stronger by duplicate the "glowing dots" layer. Press Ctrl-I to invert its colors
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Change the blending mode to Overlay. And this is the result:
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This technique can be used in various ways but the principle is still the same. Hope you enjoy this tutorial.

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