Creating A Lighting Effect In Photoshop CS4

Including special effects such as lights to provide some pizzazz to a photo can be interesting.  You can turn regular lights into some unique lighting effects.  A lot of people that have substantial experience using Photoshop CS4 use these effects for their projects.  It’s a pretty easy task to learn.  Here is how you can learn it and create your masterpiece:

Select File, New and then click OK.

Choose the “Gradient” tool and click on the left button of your mouse, holding it down.  Choose the “Paint Bucket” tool and choose the color Black.

Click the screen once.  The background should turn black.  Select the Filter component and choose “Render”, then choose Lightning Effects.

Select “Circle of Lights” and choose OK.  You will see something called objects that look like spheres (orbs).

Choose “Render” from the Filter menu and choose “Lens Flare”.  This is how you will make changes to your photo.  In order to get the light where you need it to be, you will have to move the cross in the center of the screen.  Using the “Brightness” bar, slide it to the middle.  Use the “50 to 300 mm zoom” selection for the lens and select Ok.  You will see a lot of lighted halo shapes.

Staying in the Filter menu, choose the “Stylize” command.  Choose “Glowing Edges”.  This is used to decrease thickness of the halos.  The rings will stand out on the screen.  Using the “Image” menu, choose Adjustments and then Auto Levels.  You will see the halos in the special effects on your computer screen.