faux lighting effects

[Hoogle]

So I was doing a live stream and we got talking about subtle lighting effects and how you can create them by doing really subtle things in 1 of the examples I demonstrated 1 of my favourite forms and that is using a gradient set to overlay and then a gaussian blur and faded.

which got me thinking what kind of lighting /colour editing do you use share different techniques.


Straight lighting


Subtle colour cast lighting effects


Ok not best examples and many may prefer the none altered version but this was my latest work on my desktop and was used at the time.

Would like to see more examples.

 

[tomross]

One lighting/background effect I really like is heavily blurring photographs with a nice color palette, and then adjusting/color correcting from there.

This isn't mind, but is an example of the effect I mean:

 

[IamSam]

Well................

For me it depends on the image I'm trying to enhance with a faux light. Whenever you have a light source in your image, the center of your light source will be the brightest and the least saturated. As light travels away from the source and decays (inverse square law) you get half as much light at twice the distance and more color saturation and color change through the color spectrum. The light arriving on a subject will always be different than the source both in saturation and color.

So........I wouldn't use a plain white radial gradient set to overlay and blurred. On a new layer I would make and apply a custom radial gradient going from white to a variation of yellow and then to a sample of the color of the subject/object at final destination of the light. I would then play with the blending modes to see which one I liked. I would then add a layer mask and use a foreground to transparent, radial gradient with black set as the foreground and reversed, to define the area I wanted visible.

 

[Hoogle]

yes totally agree that it depends on the image my example image and why it works well is because I simulated a studio set up when making the earphones so it does have a spotlight on and HDRI light map of an oversized studio with several light channels.

But that is the beauty of being able to model things and simulate lighting of studios takes away a lot of the guessing lighting patterns as they are already there.

This kind of effect really would not work to well on a landscape photo.

 

[IamSam]

I agree with you Hoogle.

 

[Tom Mann]

"This kind of effect really would not work to well on a landscape photo."

I dunno. Although it's not a classic landscape, I can see it being useful in the dappled light under a forest canopy, e.g., brighten up a clearing in the trees, Hudson River school sort of scenes, etc.

T