Dual Lighting Effect with Just 2 Layers in Photoshop!

[Music] hi there this is animation pics imperfect and there are lots of ways and approaches to creating the dual lighting effect in Photoshop and tons of great videos on YouTube as well by some awesome creators so be sure to check them out as well and support the community today I'm gonna share with you my personal take by sharing one simple trick to create the dual lighting effect with just two layers besides we will also learn how to add some light elements to make it look interesting so without any further ado let's get started back in the magical world of Photoshop and if you go ahead and download this for and follow along I don't even have to say it anymore check the links in the description before we start any project in Photoshop it will help if you start with the end in mind what do we mean by that if you can visualize what the end result would look like it will take you there easily so in this image if we look at it closely I want a cyan light from the left hand side and a red light from the right hand side and if you look closely even more closely you can see there's already some lights from the right and there's already lights from the left and we can utilize that we just have to color it so how do we colored the lights how do we map the colors to highlights mid-tones and shadows try to remember it gradient maps right so first of all for the tsiyon light we just have to color the light let's create a gradient map by clicking on the adjustment layer icon and then simply choose gradient map look at this gradient it goes from black to white similarly in this image from shadows to the highlights the gradients are from black to white we can change it to whatever we want we want the sine color right so single click on it the gradient editor is going to show up so the right-hand side we want to change it to cyan single click on it and then click on the color and choose whatever color you want I'm gonna choose a shade of tsiyon the brightest one that we can find alright this looks pretty good doesn't it here okay once you're satisfied and keep the left to black you can single click on it single click on the color and make sure it is black if it's not already black alright hit OK now the scion has been colored pretty easy right now we need to worry about the red color so click on the adjustment layer icon and then again choose grade in math and this time we want the red color so single click on the gradient on the right hand side view on the red and similarly on the left-hand side we want black so bring the black to the left hand side let's take the white momentarily to the right and we're gonna change the white to red so single click on it single click on the color and let's choose red now keep in mind we are choosing the brightest color we are going from the brightest color to black so that the extreme highlight areas are painted with the brightest color here okay once you're satisfied with this color if you want to increase the saturation or change the color anytime you can again open up the colors and increase the saturation to your liking it ok hit OK again and let's collapse this now we only want it the Reds on the right-hand side and how do we limit a layer to a particular area maths right so simply select the mask and then press ctrl or command to invert the mask now all if the mask is painted in black so whatever area are we gonna paint in white those areas are the only areas that are going to show up so take the brush with white as the foreground color you can decrease the flow if you want to so I'm gonna go ahead and change the flow to about 20% alright zoom in and start painting on the right hand side only paint over the areas where the light is coming from the right hand side we should not just blindly paint like this only paint over the areas where the lights are there don't worry about the light leaking we're gonna take care of that later we have decreased the flow so that we can merge the colors well alright so you can increase it to your liking now if you have painted in excess you can always change the foreground colour to black by pressing X this toggles the foreground and the background color now it's black so you can paint away the excessive areas make sense you now this looks pretty alright however we have a problem if you zoom in look at the red color it's leaking into the background if the background was 100% black this should not have been a problem but since this is not it's a little bit faded we need to apply a little bit blend if to cure that and it's gonna be pretty easy all you have to do is to double click on the right-hand side of the lamp and then take the slider of the underlying layer from left to right we are taking this effect away from the dark areas of the underlying layer in other words we are taking this red effect away from the dark areas of any layer that's under it therefore it is called underlying layer alright so let's take it to the right see all of it is away but it's so harsh right have a look it's very harsh so we need to soften it a little bit so hold the Alt key or the option key click the slider to break it apart take one half all the way to the left take the other half to the right slowly and gradually this seems to be about right hit OK once you're satisfied let's zoom out and have a look looks pretty good now there still are some leaks here and there but after we add the light element it's not gonna be visible as much you can take your time to mask it out if you want but we don't have to really do that so that's alright the do lighting effect with just two layers both of them gradient maps here's the before and here is the after now I did promise you that I would show you how to add the lighting elements light elements or some fun stuff here and there alright so I have this light painting overlay right in here so I'm just gonna drag it and drop it over the canvas all right now you can rotate it modify it in whatever way you want you can also download a lot of these in the internet or you can just licence stock but I'm gonna make it a little bigger and I'm you're gonna just stretch it a little bit alright let's stretch it something like this how to feel about this let's make it a little larger bring it right there hit enter or return we're gonna adjust this later change the blend mode from normal to guess what screen because if you want to brighten it you wanna make this act like a light and we want to make the black areas vanish and screen as the blend mode which does that now press ctrl or command T let's make it a little larger okay that looks good hit Enter or return once you're satisfied with the position now we want to make the circle look like as if it is going around the subject and the way to do that is simply erasing certain areas like this because if it was going around subject these areas won't be visible right so first of all let's click on the mask button to create a mask we'll just paint in black on those areas and to make it simple let's make a selection of the subject so first of all let's just turn off everything this is just to make things cleaner select the background layer or the subject layer select the quick selection tool or the object selection tool or any of that even the magic wand tool will do once you select one of those tools at the top you will see select subject so click on that Photoshop will automatically make a selection of the subject you can use any of your favorite selection tools if you want to this is a rough selection now let's turn on everything alright let's go to the mask right there and then simply take the brush with black as the foreground color just paint right here with the selection still active simple isn't it you're gonna paint here at the top as well looks pretty good doesn't it alright I love it now press ctrl or command D to deselect that now you can zoom in and clean it up as much as you want to all right looks pretty good now we need to match the color of the light element as you can see it's just one color you want to match it to the existing colors of the subject and we already have those gradient maps and we can also apply those gradient maps to these alright so for the cyan this one was the sine gradient map we can actually named this cyan all right now let's make a copy by just pressing ctrl or command J and take it up we only want to apply the scientist light element so hold the Alt key or the option key click on the line between these two lists this creates a clipping mask and limits the cyan copy just to the light element here's the before here is the after now we only want it on the left hand side so select the mask and then choose a gradient from white to black is fine and we're gonna make a gradient just like that so that way it's only affecting the left hand side you can experiment by creating gradients of different lengths and see what works best for you now let's paint the right hand side with red now we already have the gradient map for the red we can actually make a copy of that by pressing ctrl or command J and before we make a copy let's name it red just to make it clear press ctrl or command J and take it to the top we also want to limit it to the light element so hold the Alt key or the option key and click on the line between these two let's also we want to clean up the blend if that we did so right click on it and choose clear layer style that will be clear and the next thing we want to do is to just replace the mask with this one right you want the opposite of that mask so hold the Alt key or the option key click drag and drop right there replace layer mask yes but we just want the opposite of that so with the mask selected press ctrl or command I I stands for invert now the right hand side is painted with red but it's too dark we need to brighten it a little bit guess what - we're gonna use one of my favorite tools always you already have guessed it curves so click on the adjustment layer icon and then choose curves also in here we want the same mask so hold the Alt key or the option key click and drag and drop right there do you want to replace it of course yes and we also want to limit it to just the element so hold the Alt key or the option key and then click on the line between these two lists all right and then open up the curves properties and just brighten it it's as simple as that or you can the right slider to the left we don't want to brighten it so much that it begins to lose the details so about this point is fine you can also make it even brighter if you wish to but this seems to be a right amount now you can go to the red properties and then change the color a little bit maybe increase the saturation a little more to make it interesting hit OK once they're satisfied hit OK again and there you go my friend doesn't that look interesting so here is the before and here is the after look at the coloring it's amazing so that's our to create the dual lighting effect in Photoshop with just two layers both of them gradient and if you want to add additional light elements you can easily do so you can get some overlays from the internet and just simply place it let's do a quick little recap first of all we had this image to start with then we applied a gradient map with cyan to black for the left-hand side then we applied another gradient map from red to black and we only applied it with the mask on the right hand side we also used blend if to take it away from the dark areas and that's pretty much it and after that we added a light element changed the blend mode to screen we colored the left-hand side with cyan the same gradient map which we had used before we colored the right-hand side with red with the help of another gradient map and then we brightened the right-hand side just a little bit and that was pretty much it my friend I hope this video helped you and if it did make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe ring the bell so that you might friend don't miss any other future tips tricks or tutorials I would like to take this moment to thank all these nice and amazing people for supporting this channel on patreon and helping keep Dixon perfect free for everybody forever thanks so much for all your support thank you for watching I'll see you guys again in my next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music] [Music]

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 1,435,097

Rating: 4.9672947 out of 5

Keywords: dual lighting effect, dual color lighting, red cyan lights, lighting effects photoshop, photo effects, photo manipulation, gradient map, blend if, adobe, photoshop, tutorial, add lights in photoshop, portrait dual lighting effect, piximperfect, unmesh dinda

Id: Osgt7LP0720

Length: 12min 6sec (726 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 03 2020