Unmesh Dinda 0:00 Today I'm going to show you how to make your
subject stand out by creating a super quick spotlight effect in Photoshop.
So without any further ado, let's get started.
Back in the magical world of Photoshop, and there are just two steps involved.
Number one - darken the background and number two - brighten the subject.
As easy as that.
So, step number one - darken the background.
So create a Curves Adjustment layer by clicking on the Adjustment layer icon and then choose
Curves.
Take the highlights down, the rightmost point, take it down just like that and let's add
some contrast to the dark areas by taking a point down on the left hand side.
You can always adjust this later.
Now what you need to do, you need to select the Mask, take the brush, make sure it's big,
make sure it's hard, Opacity and Flow at 100, Blend Mode at Normal and then just dab in
on her face.
Now press Ctrl or Command + T. Adjust it the way you like it just like a spotlight.
Now once you do adjust it in the shape that you want, you can also distort it.
You can right click on it and choose Distort and now you can even adjust it in a shape
that looks more like a spotlight.
You can also do this, you can right click on this again and choose Warp.
So, make the top area a little narrower just like that and bottom area a little wider and
I'm going to take it a little up something like this.
You can go custom with this.
Once you're happy with the shape, hit Enter or Return.
Here's the fun part.
Select the mask, make sure the Properties are open, you can simply click on in here
or go to Window and then make sure Properties is checked.
Now, in the Mask Properties, just increase the feather.
As simple as that.
For this example, let's go for a little higher number, so I'm going to type in 430.
All right, this is perfect.
Amazing.
Now, what you can do is you can just name it Darkening the Background.
With the Curves Adjustment layer selected, press Ctrl or Command + J to make a copy of
this.
Now let's name this Brightening the Subject.
Now, I know this is doing just the opposite.
So, we need to select the mask and then press Ctrl or Command + I to invert the Mask.
But it's still darkening everything.
It's just making it worse.
Here's what you need to do.
You need to double click on in here to open up the Properties of the Curves just to reset
it.
Click on the Reset button.
Take it in the opposite direction just like that to make the brights even brighter.
Now, to add contrast, just click a point on the left hand side and just take it down,
just like a curve to add some dimension to it.
There you have it.
Have a look at the contrast.
It looks amazing.
So, here's the before, here is the after.
Now, what you might want to do, you can double click on the right hand side of the layer,
take the slider of underlying layer from left to right to remove the brights from the dark
areas, just like that.
This is just to add some more dimension to it.
You can always break the slider to make the transition smoother.
So if you zoom in, have a look at it, the transitions are not very smooth.
So, you can hold the Alt or Option, click on the slider, break it apart and have something
like this and just hit OK.
And here's the great part.
You can adjust these shapes after the fact and it will maintain all the Feather values.
So select the Mask and then press Ctrl or Command + T again, and you can just drag it
at the top if you want to.
So I wanted to brighten the top, that's fine.
And let's go to this one as well, Ctrl or Command + T and just drag it up a little bit.
Once you're satisfied, hit Enter or Return.
Now as you can notice, some areas are losing details due to extreme highlights, so we need
to remove them.
So let's zoom in, select the Mask, if we take the brush, black as the foreground color,
and if we try to paint it, it will not work because we have added a lot of Feather to
it.
So if we paint black in here, it just won't work because there's a ton of Feather.
So we need to put it inside a group.
So, with the Brightening Curve layer selected, press Ctrl or Command + G, so that one layer
is inside a group.
Now for the group, we can create a Mask.
So, click on the Mask button with the group selected and now you can take the brush, black
as the foreground color, decrease the flow to somewhere about 6% or 7%.
Let's go for 6%.
Now take a soft round brush.
So click on in here, select the soft round brush and now start painting on the areas
which are losing the details.
So I'm going to paint right here, great, right there a little bit.
Just get the highlights back.
Her dress.
And there you have.
Wasn't that simple?
Let me show you the before and after.
So here is the before and here is the after.
Look at the difference.
Now here's one more thing you can do.
Let's name this layer, first of all, Brightening, and you can make a group of both of them if
you think the effect is too much.
So, select the first one, hold the Ctrl or Command, select the second one and then press
Ctrl or Command + G.
Now you can name this Spotlight Effect.
You can always decrease or increase the Opacity.
So, you can decrease it if you think it's too much or increase it if you want to enhance
the effect, and for some reason, if you want to increase it beyond 100, you can always
go 100 and then make a copy of it.
Press Ctrl or Command + J of the whole group and then make a group of both of these groups,
Ctrl or Command + G and then decrease or increase the Opacity because I think it's of course
too much.
And we can go maybe 68 or something like that.
Or alternatively, if you want to keep it clean, if you want to keep everything clean, you
don't have to make a group at all.
If you want to make the background darker and just open up the Curves Properties and
take it down from here just like that.
And if you want to make the highlights brighter, you can take similar steps.
Also, if you want to introduce some color in the dark areas, that can be done too.
So let's go to the Blue Channel and you can just increase some blues in the dark areas
as well.
That is possible too.
So just go creative with this.
This can create amazingly awesome results.
So that's how to make your subject stand out with a simple spotlight effect.
All you need to do is this - darken the background and brighten the areas of the subject.
That's it.
If this video helped you, make sure to give us a like and also subscribe and not just
subscribe, ring the bell so that you, my friend, don't miss any other future tip, trick or
tutorial.
Thank you so much for watching.
I'll see you guys in my next one.
Till then, stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai