OK, you cowboys and cowgirls, gather ‘round the

campfire and let me tell you a story that will

light up your evening. This here’s a tip just for
photographers who want to enhance the lighting
in the background of an image using Adobe® Adobe Art Director
Photoshop.® This technique can also be done using Russell Preston Brown
the Lighting Effects Filter, but this technique gives lights up with
adjustment layers in
you something that Lighting Effects can’t offer, and Adobe Photoshop.
that’s dynamic adjustment! With Lighting Effects, INTERMEDIATE
once you click OK that’s what you get, and there
are no changes. With this method, you can adjust
the opacity, the levels, and the blending of light.

LIGHTS, CAMERA, LAYERS!

1. This project starts with a
cowboy portrait with a simple
gray backdrop. Our assignment is
to enhance the lighting, but not
alter the original image.

2. Earlier, the mask for this Making a Mask

project was created. You’ll need See my “Advanced
Masking” demo and
to create a mask to separate
glean the tips and
the foreground image from the techniques for making
background. the perfect mask.
3. To start the project, duplicate
the original Master Image by
dragging that layer onto the create
new layer icon at the bottom of
the Layers palette.

4. Switch to the Channels palette.

We will now load the channel
mask for the hair by dragging
the icon for the layer onto the
load channel selection icon at the
bottom of the Channels palette.

5. Return to the Layers palette, Layer Mask

and while the selection is still Here are the shortcuts
for loading and show-
loaded and the copy of the Master ing a mask:
Image is targeted, click on the
add mask icon at the bottom Cmd/Ctrl + click mask
of the Layers palette. To demon- to load the selection.
strate what is happening, I have
Option/Alt + click mask
turned off the visibility of the
to view/hide mask.
Master Image layer to reveal the
transparency behind the image. Shift + click mask to
toggle mask off and on.

LIGHTS, CAMERA, LAYERS! 2

6. Turn back on the visibility of
the Master Image layer and turn
off the visibility of the top layer,
which now has a mask. Next we
want to add the lighting, so target
the base layer and then select
the elliptical marque tool. Make
a selection with the ellipse tool.
The shape that you create should
be roughly the shape of your pro-
posed light.

7. You can change the shape, size, Transform Selection

and angle of the selected region This option is great for
being able to make
by choosing from the menu Select
changes to a selection
> Transform Selection. Here I’ve without messing with
rotated and sized the selection, the image underneath.
visualizing the appearance of my It works like Free Trans-
spotlight. Once you like how your form, but only on the
selection looks, press Enter. selection.

8. A great way to preview what the

light source will look like is to use
the Quick Mask. Turn it on at the
bottom of the Tool palette.

LIGHTS, CAMERA, LAYERS! 3

9. Now run Gaussian Blur (Filter Quick Mask Options
> Blur > Gaussian Blur) on the To change the color
and opacity of the
Quick Mask selection to soften Quick Mask, double-
the edge of the selection. The click either the Quick
background image will not be Mask icon or the stan-
affected. The current target is the dard mode icon. The
Quick Mask only. Quick Mask Options
dialog box will appear.

10. Once you have blurred the

Quick Mask to your satisfaction,
return to editing in standard
mode by choosing this icon near
the bottom of the Tool palette.
You should see marching ants as
illustrated here.

11. The area that we want to make

darker is outside this elliptical
shape, so we need to work with
the inverse of the selection. From
the Select menu, choose Inverse.

LIGHTS, CAMERA, LAYERS! 4

12. Next, create a Hue and
Saturation adjustment layer from
the bottom of the Layers palette
as shown. The selection mask that
is currently active will automati-
cally be combined with this effect.
Only the areas inside the selected
region will be affected.

13. Notice that the selection is Editing

now represented by an icon/mask At any time you can
come back and edit the
connected to the Adjustment
Hue/Saturation layer by
layer. Now, decrease the Lightness double-clicking the
value in the Hue and Saturation Hue/Saturation layer
dialog box. By using Hue and icon. You can also edit
Saturation for this effect, you do the mask itself by tar-
not alter the hue of the surround- geting it and running
Levels or Curves. That’s
ing colors. The Lightness setting
what’s so great about
should affect only the luminosity, this tip; it gives you
which is just the effect we want. an enormous amount
of control.

14. In the Layers palette, from Multiply Mode

the pop-up menu, set the Mode The Multiply mode
for this new Adjustment layer setting creates a den-
sity effect similar to
to Multiply. The darkened area combining the two
should become slightly darker. pieces of standard pho-
tographic film.
You can achieve this same type of
lighting effect using the Lighting
Effects filter. However, the tech-
nique we’ve used here does not
alter the original image, and
you can adjust the amount of
lighting at any time. You can make
changes using Levels adjustments
or by setting the Opacity of the
layer itself.

LIGHTS, CAMERA, LAYERS! 5

15. If you notice banding of Add Noise Last
values in the gradient mask or see Be sure your mask is
that the mask is not blending well just as you want it
before you add any
with the pixelated noise version of noise. That’s because
the image, then you might want you’ll be adding the
to introduce a little noise into noise directly to the
the mask. To do so, select the mask itself.
mask and choose Filter > Noise >
Add Noise. The resolution of your
image will determine the amount
of noise you add.

16. Now it’s time to turn on the

topmost masked layer that we
created at the start of this project.
By turning this on, we separate
the foreground image from the
background. The project could
actually end at this point, but let’s
take it one step further.

17. With the top layer targeted,

adjust the opacity setting to blend
the layer into the background
image. By using this technique,
you can blend the light more
naturally across the image.

So, now we have our finished

image with much more dramatic
lighting. Yee-haw! Adobe, the Adobe logo, and
Photoshop are trademarks of
Adobe Systems Incorporated.
Macintosh is a trademark of Apple
Computer, Inc., registered in the
U.S. and other countries..

©2001 Adobe Systems

Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Photo Credit ©Greg Gorman

LIGHTS, CAMERA, LAYERS! 6

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