How to Fake Color-Gel Lighting in Photoshop!

hi there this is amish from picks and perfect i hope you're having a great day and making it an awesome one in this video i'm going to share with you how to control the color and the lighting of different lights in a photograph to create a beautiful effect of colored gel photography have you ever seen those beautiful photographs created with different lighting but for the lighting they were using colored gels that's what we're gonna do but in photoshop so without any further ado let's get started back in the magical world of photoshop and if you want to go ahead and download this photo and follow along you my friend already know what to do check the links in the description now as always the very first step is separating the subject from the background this will help us in painting separately the highlights it's not absolutely necessary but it really helps if the subject is on a different layer you have the ability to just go near the edges and paint those lights anyway so to do that you need to make the selection of the subject and for that you can use the pen tool the quick selection tool the select subject it's absolutely up to you i've already made the selection to save time if you want to learn how to create selections do check out these videos i've linked them somewhere maybe in the description maybe in the card so i'm just going to load the selection by going to select and then load selection i have the subject selection right there and hit ok now with the selection active simply click on the mask button now we only have the subject on the slim let's create a black background just for the sake of it we might need that later we might be able to change the color to any color we want it's totally possible anyway so let's choose a black solid color background and place it under the subject now it is time for us to add the colors to the lighting and the way we are going to approach this is that first we're going to focus on the accent lighting maybe the light coming from the sides or the brightest lights in this case we really want to focus on the lights coming from the sides and add a crazy different color to it add something exciting to it so focus on that first focus on the exciting parts first so just above the subject layer first of all let's name this layer subject we're going to create a gradient map and using the gradient map we're going to apply the color to the lighting remember what gradient map does it maps the colors of highlights mid tones and shadows so in other words we can assign a color to any brightness level so if we can assign a color to the bright areas of the image wouldn't that be coloring the lights that's what we can achieve with gradient maps so let's create a gradient map right here by clicking on the adjustment layer icon and then choosing gradient map not gradient don't get confused anyway so right now it looks like an inverted image because the shadows are white and the highlights are black so single click on the gradient and you can choose whatever color you like and in here for the bright parts we want an orangish color so let's click on the slider and single click on the color or double click on the slider that will also bring up the color picker now let's go for an orangish color so this kind of works let's go for a hue of 12 all right and let's pick this bright orange color right and for the dark areas let's leave it at black select black and hit okay hit okay this for now looks all right have a look at the edges see the lighting right over there isn't that fantastic now we do not quite need it in the dark areas so let's take it away from there by double clicking on the right hand side of the layer and you already might have guessed it we're going to use blend if take the slider of the underlying layer from left to right you're gonna stop right over there and hold the alt k the option key click on the slider to break it apart and take it all apart to make the transition smoother otherwise it would look weird let's keep it at that that way it kind of keeps the colors in the dark areas a little more natural hit okay right now it looks awkward just wait for it also we don't want this warm light to fall into the background right because when we change color we don't want the background to change so hold the alt key or the option key and click on the line between these two layers to create a clipping mask that way if the background was something else like let's say green right you wouldn't keep it green but you get the point and if this wasn't a clipping mask see it's affecting the background so we don't want it affecting the background and that's why we held the alt key or the option key and clicked on the line between these two less to create a clipping mask that way the gradient map is limited to the subject let's change the background back to black now it's time for us to create a cool light to complement with it so let's create another gradient map and don't worry about where the light's gonna go we're gonna control and brush that in later so for now let's simply create a gradient map and this time let's choose a cool light right over here so for the right hand side let's go for something like bluish so something like this how do you feel about that a little saturated right over here now it does seem dark but we can adjust this later hit okay and now you can control the slider and keep bringing it to the left and as you do it's just simply entering into the dark areas as well so this is how we're going to control it so for now let's keep it this way because there's lots of other lights we're going to build upon it and we can always control this later all of these are adjustment less and therefore non-destructive hit okay all right also let's limit it to the subject by holding the alt key or the option key and clicking on the line between these two and let's name it cool light now it is time for us to do the magic you must be wondering how we gonna bring those warm lights around the corners back well we can simply select the mask of the cool light take the brush with black as the foreground color just start painting these areas to bring the lights in here that can be fun but there's a more natural way to do this let me share that with you select the subject layer and just keep that layer solo in other words just keep that layer on by holding the alt k or the option key and click on the eye that way all of the other layers would be turned off now we want to select the bright areas in here and the way to do that again is going to select color range and here we're going to choose highlights because that's what we're going to select now increase the fuzziness all the way to 100 because we want the transition to be absolutely smooth now let's play with the range slowly and gradually keep increasing it because right now if the range is very low most of the areas are selected so slowly and gradually keep on increasing it also make sure in the selection preview grayscale is checked which means that the areas that are selected would be white and the areas that are not selected would be black make sure invert is unchecked all right let's increase it even if we increase it all the way to the right hand side we cannot see a differentiating factor between the light falling from the corner and the light on the front so we would have to take the help of fuzziness now slowly and gradually start decreasing the fuzziness and now we are able to separate these lights let's keep it at about 75 for now and hit ok now we have the selection active hold the alt key or the option key and click on the eye again to turn everything back on i already might have guessed what we're going to do just go to the mask of the cool layer all right take the brush take a soft round brush decrease the flow to about five to ten percent depending upon what works for you i'm going to go with 10 percent and start painting with black now it will naturally come down if these marching ants are disturbing you you can hide them momentarily by pressing ctrl or command h now this is not deselected it's just momentarily hidden if you press ctrl or command h again they will come back anyway press ctrl or command h and start painting these highlight areas now i feel that these selections are very harsh let's go back press ctrl or command d to deselect it let's try again let's just select the subject layer hold the alt key or the option key click on the eye and then let's go to select and then color range and just increase the fuzziness i think this was too sharp because if you look at it look at this area it's just very sharp for us so let's increase it i think we can keep it at hundred hit okay and we can work with this selection let's turn everything back on by holding the alt key of the option key and click on the same eye and now let's go to the mask of the cool light press ctrl or command h to hide the selection and let's repeat the process with the brush selected foreground color as black and flow according to your choice so we have done a basic painting it looks good doesn't it but there's something missing i feel that we have to do some manual painting over it to make it look even more exciting and realistic so let's do that and this time to be able to paint it manually we have to deselect we have to let go of the selection because right now it's still there if you press ctrl or command h it's still there press ctrl or command d to deselect it and then start painting i feel that we can start from the right hand side and the ear side there is light falling right there so we need to bring up the warmth in those areas as well so let's start you can check the image from time to time by just holding the alt key or the option key and clicking on the subject to see where the light is actually hitting and then proceed forward hold the alt k the option key and click on the i again so there's this area as well that's how we got to know also how can we not paint inside the goggles that's the main thing sometimes if you want to see around the edges just simply change the background color to something where you can see stuff it okay i know the hair edges look awkward don't worry we're going to change the background color to hide it later again here painting inside the goggles makes the world of difference also if you paint a little extra it creates an illusion of the glass that's in there highlighting the eyes a little bit and also don't forget the eyebrows on the sides those were left out because of the highlight selection it does not actually know where the light is falling it only actually tells you which areas are bright and which areas are dark so if there's an object which is black and the light is falling on it it probably won't get selected in this case it was the eyebrows and inside the glasses so we need to paint that back in manually also actually if you look at it the back light is also falling it's not absolutely at the back for this side it's also falling a little bit on the ear as well from the front and to paint that better you can also use selections so we can come back to the subject layer just keep that one turned on let's go to select and then color range and using the highlights we're gonna do the same thing this time let's decrease the fuzziness a bit hit okay and now once we have the selection we can turn everything back on come to the mask press ctrl or command h and just start painting in this particular area now it looks like something press ctrl or command d to deselect and just remove the extras and we need to paint a little bit around the edges that's pretty much it also let's do the jacket just the edges you can go with hundred percent flow here seems like we have pretty much done let's set the background color back to black hit okay and just look at it isn't that fantastic now the left eye still looks a little weird so for the shadow areas we can just erase that all right so now we finally have a good base to work on let's create some highlights so to create the highlights create a curves adjustment layer take it to the top just like this and also we want the highlights to be a little warm so we're going to go to the blue channel and bring it down to add little yellow to it we're going to go to the green channel and bring that slightly down as well to add a slight bit of magenta and then go to red channel and bring it up just look at the highlights around the edge just focus on that and nothing else now that looks like something also limit it just to the subject by holding the alt key or the option key clicking on the line between these two layers select the mask press ctrl or command i to invert it take the brush with white as the foreground color just start painting the highlights if you want to add a little more around the nose you're going to have to go back to the cool light and erase that first and then add the highlights for the sides it's the fine but for the front we need some more highlights we need some more shine in there the easiest way to do that is simply create a solid white adjustment layer so let's create a solid color adjustment layer and simply choose white hit ok and then double click on the right hand side of the layer take the slider of the underlying layer from left to right and just focus on the front areas that's it so we're going to start the highlights from this area hold the alt option key click on it to break it apart and go till there all right that about seems right for the highlights you can always come back and change that later hit ok now select the mask press ctrl or command i also limit it just to the subject now take the brush take a soft round brush flow an opacity at about 100 just paint with white on the areas where you wanted to apply that highlight let's decrease the flow and take it away from excessively bright areas partially now let's double click on the right inside of the layer let's go back to the blending options and just fiddle with it to get to a place which is which looks all right this looks okay hit okay select the mask and just erase it from the additional extra areas now overall the image looks a little dark and if you want to make it brighter you can leave it this way but if you want to make it brighter you can create another curves adjustment layer at the very top and then take the rightmost slider a little bit to the left and you can make it as bright as you want i'm going to keep it at that okay and also if you want to add a little more shine to the hair you can add another curves adjustment layer just bring it up like this and you already know the drill select the mask press control or command i now you can take the brush white as the foreground color and just dab right there with flow and opacity at 100 of course just simply dab with a big circle now take away the extras double click on the right hand side of the layer and take the slider of the underlying layer half to the right just adds a little more shine okay and now finally it's time for us to color the background you can color it actually whatever you want but we're going to go with the theme so just above the black solid color let's create a gradient not a gradient map gradient so this creates a simple gradient like this but what we want is a gradient based on this color so let's zoom in and click on the gradient for the right hand side we want it absolutely transparent so we don't want actually any color on it so click and just drag it out so there's nothing there there's no influence for one side just choose the color as something like this hit ok that kind of works hit ok again and change the style from linear to radial all right this looks nice so we can change the scale from 100 to about how about 150 here okay now this is of course too much let's decrease the opacity and keep it at about 38. that's all right but you see this little banding right over there how do we get rid of that well just first of all the best way is just work with 16 bit let's go to image mode and change it to 16 bit and suddenly the banding goes away i don't know if you can notice this this was 8-bit you see the banding there this is 16-bit much less now on top of that if you want to completely make it go away just add some noise ctrl shift n command shift n change the blend mode to overlay check fill with overlay neutral color you go to filter convert for smart filters so that you can change the values of the noise later let's go to filter noise and then add noise about 40 is fine or you can also go with 35 the noise is very sharp so let's blur it go to filter blur and then gaussian blur let's go for 0.8 or 0.7 would work as well 0.8 works or maybe let's go for one you know one is a little more blurry and texturey and there you have some noise of course this is too much so we're gonna add just a slight bit about 35 percent and that's enough to make the banding go away and here we have our final result you might say mish but they're still bending there isn't actually it's photoshop's display as soon as we zoom in you'll notice the banding will go away it's just how photoshop shows things so this my friend is the before and this is the after isn't that fantastic now let me share with you another trick before we go so you can make it as dark as you want just keeping the side lights on and for that let's go to the cool light gradient just go there just select this and now if you just choose a darker color have a look isn't that gorgeously amazing you can even go really really black and this is a different thing but just keep something there so the dark you make it the more dramatic it begins to look so there's lots of things you can try change colors experiment you know it's up to you can do whatever you want with this so that's how to add colors to different lights in a photo and also control the brightness we just did that right now of separate colors let's do a quick recap first of all let's put the subject on a brand new layer and the background on a separate layer so that you can change the background color to whatever you want now let's start with the exciting lights or the lights that you want to focus on color them accordingly in this case it was the side lights from the back and we colored them using what gradient map all right choose whatever color you want on the left hand side you can have black and on the right hand side you can have the color of your choice you can also experiment with different colors on the left hand side do not forget to take it away from the dark areas using blend if on top of that apply the base color that's going to go all around now after you apply the base color you have to mask out the accent colors or the exciting colors okay and you can mask that out using a variety of techniques you can use color range to just select the bright areas and paint on that you can manually do it that's up to you after that whatever we did like adding highlights or adding shine was all the basic stuff but this is the fundamental the gradient map and masking to bring up the other gradient maps and that's all there is for this tutorial 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 my 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 pixim perfect free for everybody forever thank you so much for watching i'll see you in my next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music] you

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 291,956

Rating: 4.9660754 out of 5

Keywords: color lighting photoshop, photo effect, color gel photography, lighting effect, gradient map, blend if, portrait photography, photoshop tutorial, adobe, color-gel, piximperfect, unmesh dinda

Id: i62OGELr5S4

Length: 20min 29sec (1229 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 01 2021