Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Tutorials
Filters / Render Lighting
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Subtitles of the Movie (Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers / Filters / Render Lighting)
One of the less commonly used filters, but one that has tremendous potential to improve your images is the Render Lighting Filter in Photoshop. Since it only works on 8 bit images, begin by going to Image, Duplicate, and we'll say Duplicate Merged Layers Only, and then Image, Mode, 8 Bit and then Filter, Convert for Smart Filters. As soon as you see the Smart Object Icon appear you're ready to begin working. Come up to Filter, Render, Lighting Effects. Initially the new dialog may seem a bit confusing. From up here by Style, Photoshop has included some Presets that you could use to begin with. Most of the time you'll want to create your own lighting so leave this set to default. There are three different types of lights that you can use: a Spotlight, the Omni Light, or a Directional Light. We're going to be using the Omni Light in just a minute, so I'll leave it set to Omni. Over here you can control the color of the light by double-clicking on it to access the Color Picker and you could change the color of the light. For right now I'm going to leave it set at white light and click OK. The brightness or Intensity of the light is controlled by this Slider, and if you have it set to the Spotlight, the focus narrow or wide, or the hardness of the light, is controlled by this Slider. Under Properties you can adjust the Properties of all the lights, such as the Gloss, how reflective the surface seems to be, the type of Material, whether more like plastic or metallic, as well as the Exposure and Ambience. The Exposure Slider controls the overall exposure of the original image. The Ambience Slider may seem similar but it's going to control the lighting around the light that you've added. We'll see it at work in just a minute. This Color Picker will add a Color Cast to the entire image. Normally we leave that set at white unless we're trying to create an overall color cast. So, let's add some light to this zebra's face. I'll click on the bindle and move my light over the zebra's face, but it's way too wide a light. I'll click on one of the four small gray handles and drag it inward to resize the light. I need a lot more Ambient light, so I'll set that up. Maybe I'll turn down the Intensity just a hair; Preview. Before, after. We'll add just a little bit more Ambient light, and when I do that I want to decrease the Intensity just a hair and click OK. When I look, I've improved it, but I think the Intensity is still a little bit much and there's too much light spillover. So I'll double-click to access the dialog again and make my light a little bit smaller, in addition I may decrease the Intensity just a hair. Perhaps I also want to add a second light to give the impression of some sunlight coming through. In that case I click on the Light Bulb Icon and place it wherever I want to add a light. We'll use a Spotlight for this second light. The handle with the line extending toward the center, along with the handle on the opposite side, determine the length of the light. The other two handles will determine the width. So let's turn this by clicking this to make it seem that the light is coming from up here and we're going to move it over the zebra and make it a little bit wider. And next we'll add a bit to the Intensity of it. Let's decrease that Ambient a little bit, make the light a little bit wider, and let's increase the Intensity just a little bit and we can get it just where we want it. If I want to go back and adjust my original Omni Light then I click on that light source and I can adjust it. When I'm happy I click OK. If I want to remove any of these light sources I simply drag them to the Garbage Can. If, when I look at the image I think that I have a little bit too much light spillover in one place or another I can click on the Layer Mask, set my Foreground Color to black, use my Brush Tool, and in this case I'm going to decrease the Opacity to about 30 percent or so and come down and remove some of that light spillover to make it look just a little bit more natural. Now we've made the zebra's face jump out. The Render Lighting Filter makes it possible to re-light an image. It's almost like adding studio lighting after the fact, and that's pretty amazing.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers |
| Author: | Ellen Anon |
| SKU: | 34036 |
| ISBN: | 1-935320-74-2 |
| Release Date: | 2009-09-23 |
| Duration: | 8.5 hrs / 112 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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