Welcome! Today I will be taking you through some of the processes behind simulating studio lighting on images taken outside of a controlled environment. We’ll be focusing on lighting for the most part and how to get some natural highlights and shadows.
What you’ll be creating
Created as something fun for a friend of mine, we’ll be making a studio “portrait” of a dog. For this, I used some very simple techniques that should allow any pet owners here to use their own dogs as models! This will also serve as great practice for simulating studio lighting when doing photo manipulations in general. The rule to remember here is to take advantage of layers to produce dynamic and realistic shadows. So let’s get started!
Tutorial Resources
Dog– Free Images(Alternative)Hat– Free Images(Alternative)- Jacket– Adobe Stock (Link to 10 free Adobe Stock images)
Step 1
Let’s go ahead and make a new document in Photoshop () and go with a taller tabloid size. However its also helpful to work in sizes that perform better on your own computer, and with this project size isn’t set in concrete.
Step 2
Now that we’ve got a document all set up, bring in a new layer ( Shft+Ctrl+N on PC and Cmd+Shft+N on Mac). Go ahead and name this layer “Background” or something similar for your own convenience. We’re going to make this a nice dark gradient so bring up the Gradient tool (G) and set the left color to and the right to complete black . Make sure the tool is set to radial (on the top bar its located right under where it says Type, Second from the left). Click in the middle and drag out just past one of the corners. This will give us a nice soft base to work off of.
Step 3
Bring in your pet photo, remember the higher the quality you use here then the better it will look later. Even still there’s a lot you can do with less than perfect pictures with time and effort. Go ahead and use the pen tool(P) to get a close cut around the edge of your pet. It doesn’t have to be exact (especially with fur) just a nice close shape. Once your happy with the line you have Right Click and click on Make Selection. Now we can use a wonderful tool called Refine Edge.
Step 4
With the selection still active and the Magic Wand tool as your active tool (W) right-click and select Refine Edge.
