Unmesh Dinda 0:00 Hi there, this is Unmesh.
And today we're going to learn how to create beautiful light overlays using the power of
Gradients in Photoshop.
Also at the end, for the bonus tip, you will learn how to save that as a preset so that
it works with every image, no matter what the resolution.
So, without any further ado, let's get started.
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Without them, I wouldn't have been able to create these tutorials for you.
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So, here we are back in the magical world of Photoshop and if you want to go ahead and
download any of the photos shown in the tutorial, check the links in the description, and if
you are a Patreon member, you can also download the presets and also the finished PSD.
The first thing we need to do is to create the structure of the Overlay.
And how do we do that?
Well, simple.
Let's use Gradients.
So click on the Adjustment layer icon and then create a Gradient.
At the top, you see, just click on that one.
Now, we are just creating the structure.
Color does not matter.
Single click in right there, make sure the Scale is at 100%, single click.
So, we're going to use White as the structure.
So, at the bottom, bottom sliders determine the color, top sliders determine the Opacity
- how transparent or how opaque it is.
So, in the bottom slider, let's choose the color white on the left hand side and also
on the right hand side, let's choose the color white.
Now we have white on both the sides.
On the left hand side, we're going to have Opacity at 100.
I'm going to add one more slider right there and this one as well, Opacity will be 100.
I'm going to add one more and in this Opacity will be zero.
So, we are creating that structure as you can see.
Now on the right hand side as well, at the top we will add something with Opacity 100,
just like this.
We'll add one more.
This will have Opacity 100 as well.
One more, Opacity, probably zero, and we can work on that later.
First of all, let's work on the angle.
Hit OK once you're satisfied with the structure.
We will edit that later anyway and let's play with the angle.
In my opinion, I'm going to keep it something like this - 3, 3 works for us.
Now let's get back to it again and play with this.
See, we are creating that light leak kind of effect.
And you can play with this.
So what I'm planning to do, let's delete this slider, and let's set the Opacity of this
one, let's go a little creative, let's set the Opacity of this one to about 20%.
Right?
And then let's create one more next to it and this one should be zero.
See, what are we doing.
You can go creative with this, that's absolutely upon you.
See, we're creating this line, this faded line right there, and just play with the numbers.
Maybe you'll come up with something amazing and if not, you can always change this later.
This is absolutely non-destructive.
So let's select this slider and set the Opacity to about 25, 25 looks to be a good number.
We're going to add some fade, something like that.
Hit OK.
I kind of like this.
Here as well, we'll add some smoothness.
And let's set the Opacity of this slider to about 90.
That looks nice.
Or maybe we can just take it a little bit to the left and give it this kind of effect.
Keep in mind, we can always play with that later.
Once you're happy with all of this, hit OK.
Now we have one structure to play with.
Now, let's add some color to it.
So we are trying to create the sun flare effect.
So, at the top, how about adding yellow, and as it goes to the bottom, we can add some
reds, right.
So let's add one more Gradient and this one is just for the color.
So click on the Adjustment layer icon and this time again, let's choose Gradient, single
click here and then let's choose any color and on the right hand side, we will choose
red or yellow, because yellow is going to be on the highlights.
This is fine.
I like that hit okay.
And on the left hand side, let's choose red, bright red.
Now, let's take the yellow a little bit to the left we want more of yellow, something
like this works.
Once you're happy with all of this, just hit OK.
Now we don't want this angle to be absolutely straight, a little bit tilted.
So let's tilt it a little bit, maybe 80, 80 works for us.
Let's keep it a round figure so that if you choose to add something later in the same
angle, you can just dial in the number.
Let's put in 82.
All right, hit OK.
Now, we want to limit the colors just to the structure.
What do we do?
You already guessed it.
Let's create a Clipping Mask.
So press Ctrl + Alt + G, this is the shortcut for the clipping mask or, let's go back, you
can also hold the Alt key or the Option key, click on the line between these two.
This also creates a Clipping Mask.
But that doesn't look like light.
Why?
Because we haven't changed the Blend Mode.
So, let's change the Blend Mode of this structure to Linear Dodge.
This one works great because this is the Lighten Blend Mode group and inside of that, this
one works great for lights and if you want to know more about Blend Modes and stuff,
watch this complete guide to Blend Mode.
Alright, let's choose that and have a look at this.
Isn't that amazing?
Now, what you can also do, you can always get back to the structure and play with it.
Just double click on the symbol right there, symbol of the Adjustment layer, and single
click here and just play with it if you want to Just increase it to 100.
I think I'm going to keep it like this.
I kind of like that.
Hit OK, hit OK again.
And there you have it.
Let me tell you an interesting fact.
Linear Dodge is one of the special eight Blend Mode.
And the thing that these special eight Blend Mode is that Opacity and Fill work differently.
Fill decreases the projection in these special eight Blend Modes.
If you want to know more about them, you can definitely check out this video, but have
a look at this right now.
If you decrease the Fill, look, the projection changes.
If you decrease the Opacity, it just fades away.
But Fill, now that is something.
If you think that area is getting too bright and too clipped, you can of course, decrease
the Fill and control it to your taste.
Let's keep it at about 78 or let's keep it 76.
That seems okay.
Now, how about we create one more structure?
You can add as many structures as you wish.
So, at the top, let's select the top most layer first so that we create the structure
above this.
Now, let's create one more Gradient.
Click on the Adjustment layer icon and then choose Gradient.
And this time, we will add kind of a flare, ofasoft flare from the left.
Single click on this one and choose anything to transparent.
And on the left hand side, of course, we will choose white because we will be changing the
colors later, we are just creating the structure.
And on the right hand side as well, we'll choose white.
This is just to see things clearly.
Now hit OK.
And of course we will change the angle for this one.
Let's keep the angle this way to see exactly what the angle is, you can always decrease
the Scale to see where the angle is and you can again increase that later.
This is just to see where the angle falls.
So, I'm going to keep it at about -9.
Yes, that's great.
Now, let's make this softer.
First of all, increase the Scale back to 100 so that you have the complete control.
Let's create one slider right there with Opacity at 100.
Or let's keep it at about 80.
What do you think?
80 would be great.
Now we control that, how far it will go.
Or let's delete this slider.
This was unnecessary.
Let's drag it up, that's all you got to do.
That kind of works.
Let's try adding one more slider right there with the Opacity of, let's say, 10.
Let's see how that looks.
That's not bad.
Let's change it to 20.
Yes, that looks wonderful.
Hit OK once you're satisfied.
This is great.
Hit OK again.
Now let's apply some blue to it.
So click on the Adjustment layer icon and then again, let's choose Gradient and this
one is for the color.
And in this case, we will choose something like, let's try this one, this is violet to
orange.
Hit OK.
And again, the advantage of angles, 82, right?
We can actually dial in that number.
This was the angle that works for us.
Hit OK and then create a Clipping Mask.
Hold the Alt or Option and click on the line between these two layers.
All right, now we are applying color to that.
Now, let's change the Blend Mode to what?
Linear Dodge.
So, Linear Dodge, dodging means brightening.
Yeah, it's kind of okay.
It's not amazing.
We might have to change the color.
No problem.
So, let's go here and let's change the color.
Single click on this one.
Single click on this one and you can just click on the color and change it.
Let's make it brighter blue.
Yes.
Now that's wonderful.
You can actually increase the amount of blue by taking this diamond to the right, just
like this or taking this complete slider to the right, whatever you want.
So we're going to keep it at that, hit OK.
Hit OK again.
Let's play with the structure again.
So let's go to the structure.
Probably we'll increase it even more.
See that?
See how awesome that Overlay looks?
There you have it, a very nice Overlay.
Now if you want, you can always decrease the Opacity of the previous one, but I'm going
to keep it at 4.
Let's play with the Fill.
Let's keep the Fill at about 70%.
Now just adding a simple Overlay is not enough.
We need to do some Color Grading to match the image with that of the Overlay.
So, let's create a Curves Adjustment layer at the bottom of these Overlays.
So, first of all, select the Background so that when we create the Curves, it is above
those, then click on the Adjustment layer icon and then choose Curves.
First of all, let's add some contrast to it.
So let's make the brights brighter.
So, with the Hand tool selected right there, we need to make these highlights brighter.
So click and drag it up, as easy as that.
Now, we don't want to lose the details.
So this is fine.
Now we need to make the darks darker.
So what do you think is dark?
This is dark, right?
So, we're going to take a point and take it down, just like so.
Now have a look, just a simple change is getting us so much closer to that effect.
Nice, isn't it?
So we're going to keep it at that we're
going to add some contrast to it, which is great.
Now let's add some yellow to the highlights.
As you can see, the flares have a lot of yellow in them.
So let's go to the Blue Channel, click on the Adjustment layer icon and then choose
Blue.
Why blue, by the way?
Because blue is the opposite of yellow.
RGB opposite of CMY.
So, we need to add yellow in the highlights, so we'll take the blues down in the highlights.
So right inside represent the highlights, we will click a point or take this point and
take it down.
But we do not want to add blues to the shadows.
So take the shadows back up just like that.
There we have yellow only in the highlights.
Now let's go to the Red Channel.
Let's see what we can do there.
If we increase the reds in the highlights, wow, it makes a massive difference, doesn't
it?
So there you have it.
If you take down the reds in the shadows, that's also a nice effect, by the way.
We can definitely do it.
All right.
Now let's go to the Green Channel.
Let's try increasing it and decreasing it, see what helps.
Increasing it does help, in the highlights especially.
So let's increase the greens a little bit on the highlights and decrease it on the shadows
like that.
You see what that did?
Amazing, isn't it?
So here's the before, not matching at all.
But if you turn that on, it's going so well with that of the Overlay.
Now let's create one more Curves to add some faded effects in here.
So click on the Adjustment layer icon and choose Curves again and we are going to take
the shadows a little up like that.
And on the left hand side, create a point and take it down, just some faded effects.
There you have it.
So, this is the before, this is the after with the Overlay.
Now, if you are a Creative Cloud member good news, you can actually save this whole thing
as a preset that is completely customizable.
Here's how to do it.
First of all, let's make a group of all of these.
So select the first Adjustment layer on top of the Background or the Subject layer, hold
the Shift key, select the last one.
All of them are now selected.
Then press Ctrl or Command + G. Right?
And let's name this, what do you want to name it?
Let's give it a generic name - Fix Light Overlay.
There we have it.
Now, all you gotta do is to go to Window and then Libraries.
This will only work if you're a Creative Cloud member.
Now, all you gotta do is to just drag it and drop it right there.
Now it is uploaded to your library.
As you can see, it shows up that preset right there.
All you got to do to import it,let's open up another image, there we have it.
If you want to add this to this image, all you have to do, you would think that just
simply drag it and drop it right there.
It won't work that way.
If you hit OK, it just won't work because it treats it as a PSD and adds it as a Smart
Object of that PSD.
We don't want any of that.
What we want is to just import those exact layers, nothing else.
So, let's delete this.
Let's go back to the Libraries.
And then to do that, hold the Alt key or the Option key, then click it and then drag it.
Now have a look.
Isn't that amazing?
Here's the before, here is the after.
The other way to do it is, let's delete this, right click on the preset that you had saved
and then choose Place Layers, right there.
It does the exact same thing.
Now if you wish to, you can also add some textures to it.
So let's go to our finder or Explorer.
And I'm just going to drag and drop in this texture that we see.
And let's rotate it and make it larger, just like so.
You can always edit the texture if you want to.
I'm going to keep it at that.
This is okay.
I think we can apply the Blend Mode - Screen, we'll try Screen, but for that most of it
is very bright.
So, if you choose Screen, see what happens.
It just doesn't look right.
So, let's change it back to Normal.
We have to make it darker.
Since most of it is white, why not invert it.
So, with the layer selcted, press Ctrl or Command + I to just invert it.
Now, to make it even darker, you can add some Levels Adjustment layer or Curves Adjustment
layer to it.
So click on the Adjustment layer icon and then choose Curves, make the darks darker
by taking the slider on the left hand side to the right, just like so.
We don't want to lose the details.
Something like that, this is ok.
And then choose the texture layer, let's name this texture by the way, and change the Blend
Mode from Normal to Screen.
You see, now, that looks better.
Of course, this is kind of too much.
So, let's decrease the Opacity.
Let's add a tiny bit.
You know what, something is making it very dark.
What is making it very dark again?
The Curves, because it's affecting everything.
We just want the Curves to affect the texture.
What do we do?
Create a Clipping Mask.
So the Curves layer selected, press Ctrl + Alt + G / Command + Option + G to create the
Clipping Mask and it solves the issue.
Now you can of course, decrease or increase the Opacity according to your taste.
I'm going to keep it at about 28.
You can choose whatever you want.
And there you have it.
So, here's the before, here is the after.
So, that's all my friend.
That's how to add beautiful light overlays in Photoshop.
All you have to remember is this, first of all, create the structure using a Gradient.
For this example, we used only white to create that structure.
And on top of that, we need to add color to it and for the color, you can use Solid Color
Adjustment layer or another Gradient and create a Clipping Mask out of it.
And do not forget to change the Blend Mode to Linear Dodge.
So that's pretty much it for this video.
You can also add some texture later, some Color Grading using Curves.
And then save that as a preset if you want to, by using Libraries in Creative Cloud.
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Thank you for watching.
I'll see you guys in the next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai