Welcome back to another very exciting tutorial
here at the PhotoshopTrainingChannel.com. My name is Jesus Ramirez and you can find
me on Instagram @JRfromPTC. In this video, I'm going to show you how to
add sun and light streaks to a photograph in Photoshop. I got this idea while working on a personal
composite. You might have seen this if you follow me
on my Behance account. Behance.net/JRfromPTC. In this composite, I had to add a sun in the
background. Notice that there was no actual sun in the
image, so I had to create that digitally. So that's what I'm going to show you today,
one of the methods that you can use to achieve a similar effect. So we're going to be working with this image
here. As you can see, it's an overcast, cloudy day,
and what we want to do is add the sun behind the clouds, and have some sunlight, sun rays
coming out of the clouds. The first thing I'm going to do is click on
the Brush Tool, set white as my foreground color, then create a new layer by clicking
on the New Layer icon, here on the bottom right in the Layers panel. And I'm simply going to paint with white in
this area here. I want the sun to be behind these clouds here,
so I'm just going to paint with white. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to change
the Blend Mode to Linear Dodge Add, and nothing is going to happen. Everything looks exactly the same, but if
we double click on the layer, and bring up the Layer Style Window, I can click on this
check box here, Transparency Shapes Layer, uncheck that. Notice that the blend is a little bit different
now. It looks a lot hotter, a lot like the sun
would look like behind the clouds, but, currently, this highlight is in front of the clouds,
so we want to place it behind the clouds. So, one way of achieving that effect is by
using the Blend If options and going into the underlying layer slider, so I can hide
whatever is on this layer behind dark pixels, which is what I want to do, or bright pixels
on this side. But I want to use the dark luminance values
of the underlying layer, in this case, so I'm going to click and drag this to the right
and notice what happens. The image starts disappearing in areas that
are in this shade of gray, or darker, and I want something like that. Now, the problem is that the edges are a bit
hard, but we can hold Alt, Option on the Mac, click on this icon to split it in half, and
we can have the pixels disappear gradually. And all you would do now is just fine tune
these sliders until you get something that works for the effect that you're going for,
so, maybe something like that, and press OK. If I press V on the keyboard to select the
Move Tool, I can click and drag this around. Now the problem right now is that this edge
is very sharp, so what I'm going to do now instead, is select the Brush Tool by pressing
B on the keyboard; selecting a soft brush, and increase the size of my brush by tapping
on the right key on the keyboard to create a large brush, like so, and painting over
what I made earlier, and then, pressing Ctrl T, Command T to transform. Hold Shift and Alt, Shift Option on the Mac,
to scale this down accordingly, and, maybe, distort it a little bit so it fits nice in
that area, so maybe, add that highlight right there. And then, I'll press V on the keyboard again
and move it accordingly. So, now, we have the sun coming out of those
areas, and I still don't like the way it's looking, so I'm just going to hide just a
little bit more of those pixels, just so it's behind these areas there. If I click and drag this layer on the image,
you'll see how it appears, as if that highlight is behind the clouds, so I'm just going to
place it accordingly right about here. That's before and that's after. What I'm going to do now is create a new layer,
and with this new layer, I'm going to paint with white, and I'm going to use that to create
the sunbeams or light streaks. So I'm going to click on the Brush Tool, and
I want to decrease the size of my brush by tapping on the left bracket key on the keyboard,
and I'm going to click on this icon here to bring up the brush's panel. And I'm going to click on Shape Dynamics to
create Size Jitter, Scattering, increase that as well. And I'm also going to increase the spacing. And I've actually bumped the Hardness all
the way up, and then, I'm just going to actually make the brush even smaller and just paint
like this. And that's going to be the light coming through
the clouds. Then I'm going to go into Filter, Blur, Radial
Blur, and I'm going to select Zoom, increase the amount to 100%, and I'm just going to
have estimate where the center point would be. I really can't tell. I wish that Photoshop had a precise way of
entering coordinates, like they do with the Lens Flare. In this case, we just have to guess, so I'm
just going to tap on here and press OK, and I'm a little bit off, so that's not going
to work. So I'm going to undo that, Ctrl Alt Z, Command
Option Z on the Mac, and then, press Ctrl Alt F, to bring up the last filter we used
with options, in this case, a Radial Blur, and I'm just going to move it to the right
a little bit and up, and then, press OK. And that's pretty good. So I'm going to press Ctrl F, Command F on
the Mac, to redo the last filter, or you can just come in to Filter, and click on the top
option, Ctrl F, Command F on the Mac. And I'm just going to press that several times
just to increase the Blur and it looks more realistic, so something like that. Then, I can add a Layer Mask, paint with black,
with a soft brush in areas that I don't like the light streaks hitting, so, one example
right up here in the far end closer to us, and, maybe, some of the ones up here if I
want to hide those, I can. And, now, we have the light streaks, and we
have the sun. Now, if this is not strong enough for you,
you can duplicate it, you can select it and press Ctrl J, Command J on the Mac, and then,
use the Fill to bring down the Intensity. If you use the Opacity and bring that down,
it's going to look flat as you see there. The Linear Dodge is one of eight blend modes
that has different results when you adjust the Opacity compared to the Fill, so I'm going
to bring that down to about 20 or 19%, before and after, just a little brighter, and I like
it better. What I'm going to do now is, actually, select
the light rays. Press V on the keyboard and just move them
slightly over to the left and up a little bit. And that's the final effect using this technique. And, actually, as I was working on this project,
I thought of another way to create light rays that I figure that will take a minute and
show you how that's done. So this is sort of like a small bonus for
this tutorial. I'm going to go ahead and disable the light
rays layer, and I guess I can call it "original light rays," just so we know what this layer
is, and we'll just leave the other two layers alone since we're going to _[00:07:19] for
the other example. So another way to create light rays is to
start with a blank layer. Make sure they have Black and White as your
foreground color, and go into Filter, Render, Clouds, and you get a set of clouds, like
so. Now, if you want to create clouds that have
a little more contrast, you can hold Alt, Option on the Mac, as you click on the Clouds
Filter, so here I am, I'm holding Alt, Option on the Mac. Sometimes you may need to hold that button
before you actually click on the Filter menu, but notice the difference; now, the clouds
have a little more contrast and, actually, I'll create a new layer, and I'll do it while
holding Alt or Option, just so you can see the difference, so that's holding Alt. Now, some people think that this is just an
inversion of the Clouds Filter, and it's not, so I'm going to press Ctrl I, Command I on
the Mac, to Invert and you'll notice that it is, in fact, clouds with more contrast. But, anyway, so we have clouds with more contrast,
and what I'm going to do now is simply bring down the Fill Opacity, just so I could see
through it, and I'm going to click on the Elliptical Marquee Tool, and just create a
selection around the area where I want my light rays to be, so somewhere around here. Then, I'm going to click on the Layer Mask
icon to create a Layer Mask. I'm going to bring the Opacity all the way
up again to 100%. With the layer mask selected in the Properties
panel, you can feather it. If you don't see the Properties panel, you
can go into Window, Properties. So feather it just a bit, something like that. Then, right click on the layer mask and select
Apply Layer Mask. So, now, it's a layer that just contains those
clouds there. Then I can go into Filter, Blur, Radial Blur,
and make sure that you set the amount to 100, zoom, and we'll just try it there and see
how that works. And that seems to be a good spot for it, so
I'm just going to press Ctrl F, Command F on the Mac, to redo that filter a couple more
times, then I'm going to change the Blending Mode to Screen and we have our light rays. Now, they're obviously different than these
light rays. It's just a different method of creating different
types of light rays, so maybe you want them thin and strong, or wider and softer. You can also create a Levels Adjustment Layer. Clip it to the level below it, and then, adjust
the levels so you get different results with the light rays. And, of course, on the light rays layer, I'll
call this "second light rays," just because it's the second layer of light rays. I'm going to add a layer mask, and I'm just
going to paint with black right on the bottom here, so that's before, and that's after. This is without the Levels Adjustment Layer,
and this is with it, and this is the original. So these are just two simple methods to create
light rays in Photoshop. And the reason that I decided to show you
the second method is so that you can start thinking about how you can use different filters,
different blending modes to create the effects that you need. And, also, to show you that there's not one
way to do anything in Photoshop. There's many different ways of achieving the
same result or similar result, so I want to give you more options for when you're working
on your projects. And that's it for this tutorial. I hope that you enjoyed it and that you learned
something new. Make sure that you leave all your comments
or questions down below. If you create an image using this tutorial
or any other of my tutorials, feel free to share it on Instagram with the hashtag #ptcvids. I often do a search for this hashtag to see
what you're all up to. If I find your image, I will leave you a comment. Also, don't forget to subscribe and click
on that Like button. If you have a friend who you think will enjoy
this tutorial, please share this link with them now. Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you
again soon.
