How-to: create different lighting effects
by Joey at 12:56 amOK. Many blogs do this very well. I’m going to show you a quick technique to add lighting effects to your images. This works well against darker backgrounds, but for this tutorial, I’ll show you this technique using a photo from iStockphoto.com.
First, you open up your file in Photoshop. Now, in your layers palette, add a new blank layer. Using the pen tool, draw a curvy line around a particular part of the photo. Right click on the path, and select Stroke Path. (To ensure a big enough line, be sure to go to your brush palette and select a pixel size of around 8. Also make sure you increase the hardness to 100 percent.) When the dialog box pops up, select brush from the drop down menu, and click the box next to Simulate Pressure. This creates a softening effect at the ends of the path.
Now right click and delete the path so you only have the line existing. On the layers palette, double click the layer of the path to bring up Blending options. Now click on the box next to color overlay, and make sure it says Linear Dodge and choose an orange-ish color.
This will provide a nice effect. Within the Blending Options, select Outer Glow and also choose Linear Dodge from the drop down menu. Now play with the settings, and I chose a red-ish color for the outside glow in this instance.
Now select OK. And you should have a nice effect as in this one.
Abduzeedo.com has many tutorials featuring this. Also by playing with different settings and different brush strokes, you can make additional effects. It’s something to try and mess with at least.
