Playing with Lights and Shadow to Create Dramatic Photo Manipulation

Playing with Lights and Shadow to Create Dramatic Photo Manipulation
Playing with Lights and Shadow to Create Dramatic Photo Manipulation

Before let's take a look at how the image looks right now.

02_2

The most essential thing (on which the whole tutorial focuses) is that woman with dinosaur were shot in completely different light scenery than the background. They were shot during sunlight which causes hard transitions between lights and shadows.

On the other hand the background image was shot when it was cloudy and foggy and light was very soft - you can barely see difference between lights and shadows.

On woman and dinosaur the light source comes from the left. You'll add this light source also to the background and create more visible difference between lights and shadows. You'll also soften transition between lights and shadows on woman and dinosaur.

You might think that I talk only about light scene but not cover the topic of color adjustments. Well, you'll make these kind of changes too, but I want to focus especially on changing lights and shadows in this tutorial because I think it's essential skill for photo manipulator, which is often ignored. I believe that many manips could be significantly better if author thinks more about lights and shadows.


Step 3 - Adding Sun Rays to the Background

Let's start with changing the light scene of the background. As I said light source on woman and dinosaur comes from the left but there is no such thing on the background. You'll add some sun rays coming from that side in this step so the picture will make better sense.

Add new layer under the layer WOMAN and name it SUN RAYS. Download the sun rays brush listed in the beginning of the tutorial and install it into Photoshop. If you don't know how to install custom brushes into Photoshop you can take a look at this tutorial.

On the picture below you can see the layer order.

03_1

Grab the Brush Tool (B) and select one of the brushes you've just installed. Set the Master Diameter on proper size and lower its Opacity on about 50%.

Hold Alt on your keyboard to activate the Eyedropper Tool (I) and pick some very light color from the background.

While doing manipulations (painting, making lights and shadows etc.) try to avoid using pure white and black color. They both are very harsh and very rarely look realistic. You can very rarely see pure black and white in real life. Even if you think something is black, it's more likely dark grey, dark green... The same with white color.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Create Dot Grid Art in 1 Click
Sponsored

Turn any photo into a dot grid artwork with these Photoshop actions. You'll get great results with dots that change size. They get larger in brighter areas and smaller in darker areas. Free download available.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

cross