How To Achieve Realistic Lighting Effects In Photoshop For Digital Art

How To Achieve Realistic Lighting Effects In Photoshop For Digital Art – Read on as we show you how to create brightness and lighting effects in Photoshop! Learn how to create a shiny ring effect, blend it into a photo, add grain effects with the included Photoshop brush, and more!

We want to see what you create with the techniques discussed in this tutorial! Send us your custom glow effect for a chance to be featured on this site and on social media.

How To Achieve Realistic Lighting Effects In Photoshop For Digital Art

Use the image in the tutorial download, a free image from Pexels.com or Unsplash.com, or an image you own the rights to (Make sure it’s family friendly!)

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Creating special effects in Photoshop is a lot of fun and can lead to some pretty amazing images. The best part about glow effects like the one we create in this tutorial is that they can be added to almost any photo.

Take a look at the image we are using as an example. It is a simple, well-written portrait of a woman practicing yoga and meditation. There’s no way to use a glow effect to spice things up a bit, right?

Since we want a glow effect, we know we’re going to add a light source to the image. If you want a new light source to stand out, it often helps to darken the rest of the photo.

Create a Levels adjustment layer, place it above the background image in the Layer stack, and drag the top Output Levels slider to the left.

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This lowers the overall brightness of the image, which helps the glow effect stand out. It also allows us to add more ambient lighting around the subject to enhance the overall effect.

Our goal for this image is to create a circle of energy around the subject of the image. So we need a ring to start with.

To create a ring shape, grab the Ellipse Tool and click and drag around the object while holding SHIFT to maintain a perfect circle. Make sure the Mesh is set to None and the Stroke is set to the color you want for the glow effect (you can change this later).

Once you’ve created the circle, you can use the Move tool to change its position or the Transform options to resize it as needed.

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It’s always good practice to leave a reference for any original assets you’ve made. Once you are happy with the color and position of the circle, duplicate it. Right click on the duplicate and select Rasterize Layer. This is the layer on which we start building the effect.

Go ahead and hide the original Shape Layer, we’ll keep it in case we want to refer to it later.

Now that we have the base of our glowing ring, we’re going to duplicate this layer while adding different blur and blending modes to build the effect.

Don’t worry about making it too strong at first. We will repeat this process over and over as we increase the intensity of the blur at each step.

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To add natural contrast to the glow effect, create a layer mask on each layer of the ring and paint with black in random spots using a large soft brush set on low flow. It’s very subtle, but it makes the overall effect look much more natural.

As you continue to add new layers of rings with different levels of blur, try changing the blending modes of each one as well. We’ve found that the screen tends to create a nice, soft lighting effect, so you’re good to go.

However, you can try others to see what happens. We found that setting one layer to the solution blend mode created a cool grainy effect that we could add later.

When using non-standard blending modes, such as Dissolve, it often helps to convert the effect into a new layer that we can set to a standard blending mode.

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To copy the solution mixing mode effect, we just need a way to select all generated particles. Add a black fill layer with a solid color behind the release layer.

Then use Select Color Range to choose the color of the glow effect. With the Selection active, create a new layer and fill that selection with the same color you used to create the clear rings.

You’ll end up with a new Layer with a copy of the Solution Blending Mode effect. Go ahead and delete the original layer we set to Blend Mode – it won’t be necessary.

As we did with the other glow layers on the ring, go ahead and add a Gaussian Blur to the Dissolve effect to help it blend more naturally with the image.

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Continue duplicating layers (or entire Groups) and playing with blur and blend modes to incorporate the glow effect you want.

Now that our shiny ring is ready, let’s bring it into the picture so it looks like it’s behind the subject.

We need the ring to be invisible wherever it goes over the top of the theme. To do that, we can create a theme selection and use it to mask the ring of these areas.

Merge the glowing layers of the rings together and then hide the Cluster. Zoom in on the theme a bit, then go to Select and select a color range. Select black from the theme palette and dial until you have a fairly clean theme selection.

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Now make the group glow ring visible and load the active theme selection into the group layer mask. You should see something like this:

The selection looks good, but this is the opposite of what we want. Apply the Layer Mask you created by pressing CTRL or CMD + I.

We have a very cool glowing ring that appears to float behind the subject. However, we need to integrate the glow from the ring into the lighting of the photo if we want it to look realistic.

This requires manual work with the brush tool, but the payoff is worth it! Zoom in on the image and start lightly tracing around the edges of the subject with a light color taken from the light ring. The goal is to create some colorful shades around which the light from the ring appears to surround the object.

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Spend a little extra time when working with detailed areas like hair. The better you can complement it with natural accents, the better the overall effect will look.

Take as much or as little time as you like with this part, but the more you pay attention, the more realistic everything will look.

Once you’re done with the smaller edge details, we can add larger, softer glow effects around the object. Again, use a large, soft brush and a light flow to paint larger spots on the edge of the object.

Then use Blend If to ensure that these events only appear where there are natural highlights in the image.

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We are almost ready. We did a good job introducing effects and lighting around the subject, but we need to focus more on the rest of the environment and background. It makes sense that the bright ring would create reflection and light on the ground around the object.

To do this, simply duplicate the entire shiny group of rings, then adjust and place it back so that it fits in a natural area facing the ground.

And then use the Brush Tool to paint with black on the Layer Mask to make the effect much more subtle.

Custom brushes for Photoshop are a great way to enhance special effects. In particular, custom brushes are the best way to create grain and weather effects, as we can introduce randomness and natural variation into the brushes themselves.

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You can watch the video to learn how we created the custom brush, but if you want to skip that process, the brush is available for free in the tutorial download.

Now that we’ve done most of the effect, we can zoom out and look at the image as a whole. Here we can decide if we want the glow effect to be more or less intense and adjust accordingly.

You can add a Gaussian Blur to the newly duplicated layer, change the blending mode, and use layer masks to add some intensity contrast to different areas of the image.

Once you’re done, you should have a natural glow effect that takes the original photo to amazing new places!

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But it doesn’t stop there! Whether you’re creating special effects or combining multiple images together, it can really help tie everything together.

To add quick and effective color grading, try using a color balance adjustment layer to push and pull the colors in the image until you get the look you want.