Real World Compositing with Adobe Photoshop CS4

Lighting Enhancements

The techniques discussed in this section are used to control visual focus and balance and, in some cases, to add drama. Most are surprisingly easy to create, while providing great visual impact. Lighting layers, as we call them, are typically little more than brush strokes on a layer that rests above your target subject in the layer stack. The layer is then blurred and blended in different ways to give the effect of additional lighting in the scene.

“Lighting Layers”

Shaped light. For creative, vignette-like effects, use the Brush tool to create a simple white shape with soft edges on an empty layer. Setting the brushed layer to Overlay causes the painted areas to brighten whatever is beneath them. In Figure 10.22, the ...