How to Use Light and Shadow to Create a Dramatic Photo Effect with Photoshop

In this tutorial you'll learn how you can change light scene in your photography or photo manipulation to get dramatic atmosphere. I'll also show you how you can use Channels to easily change sky, how you can use different filters to create dreamy effect and give you several tips on color adjustments. Let's get started!

Preview of Final Results

How to Use Light and Shadow to Create a Dramatic Photo Effect Photoshop Tutorial

Resources

Step 1 - Preparing the Picture

Open the photo of a girl in Photoshop. Right click on the Background and select option Layer From Background. Then open photo of sky and drag it into previous picture. Place it on the top and name it SKY. Below you can see how your layers should look liker.

Step 2 - Blurring the Sky

Right now the sky is not blended with the rest of the picture. You'll fix it in this and following steps. As you may notice picture of the sky is sharper than the background. It's because it was taken with different (higher) f-number setting than the rest of the image. If you start blending sky now you won't get realistic result because of that. To fix it you need to blur the sky a little. Make sure that the SKY layer is active (just click on it). Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, set the value Radius on about 3,5 pixels and press OK.

Below you can see how the image looks so far. Still lots of work need to be done.

Step 3 - Blending the Sky

Before you'll start to adjusting contrast and colors of the sky let's focus on blending. Click on the layer SKY and change its Blending Mode on Multiply. You can find this option in the bottom part of the palette Layers (same as your layers). If you don't see it go to Window > Layers or simply press F7 on your keyboard.

Then lower the Opacity on 80% to get even better result. You can find this option right to Blending Mode changes on Layers palette.

Below you can see how the picture looks so far. It's much better but still needs some adjustments to look perfect.

Step 4 - Soft Transition

As you can see on the photo above there is a harsh line between SKY and the rest of the image. To fix it add new layer mask to sky. You can find the button Add layer mask on the bottom part of the palette Layers.

Grab the Brush Tool (B), select some soft round brush, lower its Opacity on about 40% and pick black color. Make sure that the layer mask is active - click on the thumbnail of it.

If you're not familiar with how you can work with layer masks let me explain it to you. It's similar to what can the Eraser Tool (E) do - you can hide some parts with it. But in compare to the Eraser Tool (E) you can let these parts reappear whenever you want. If you want to have some part hidden you simply paint with black on layer mask, if you want to see it again you paint white on that area. You can't do this with the Eraser Tool (E), you can go back few steps (depends on your History settings) but you always loose also the progress you did so far. But back to the tutorial... Grab the Brush Tool (B), pick black color and paint over the harsh line of the sky to make nice, soft transition. On the picture below you can get inspiration what to achieve.

9 comments on “How to Use Light and Shadow to Create a Dramatic Photo Effect with Photoshop”

Tashia says:

January 8, 2018 at 10:42 am

Thank you so much for this tutorial. I've read many tutorials about all of the tools you mentioned in this article, but I was never able to really grasp or truly understand the concept behind the tool. You have explained them in a way that really make sense to me!! And that is very much appreciated!

Anonymous says:

September 25, 2014 at 9:06 am

thanks a lot

h2theme says:

May 12, 2014 at 3:49 am

thanks very nice.

Ernest says:

March 20, 2014 at 5:00 pm

Woow! I am very very impressed about your tutorial. With all your stuffs, i have no doubt am gonna be a pro in photoshop!

Nidheesh Roy T.A says:

July 18, 2013 at 10:58 pm

thats a wonderfull tutorial....thank u....

chanaka says:

December 21, 2012 at 7:36 am

thanks wow nice

eddi says:

December 15, 2012 at 5:02 pm

plz post a video tutorial....

Ferobanjo says:

December 9, 2012 at 11:05 am

Yes girl, nice job. Thanx

CS6 novice says:

November 22, 2012 at 8:44 pm

What a fantastic tutorial, covering so many aspects of photoshop. I'm now even more excited to learn the program. . Thank you! thank you! thank you!