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.
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Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you again soon.