when I shot this image on Whitby Pier there was a great Sunset but it was still too early for
the street lights in the foreground to be turned on so in this video I'll explain how to turn on
street lights using a few basic Tools in Affinity photo I'm going to start by adding the new empty
pixel layer which is where I'll create my new light source I can do this using the new layer
option in the Affinity photo layer menu or I can click the add new pixel layer icon to the bottom
right of the layers Studio panel the way that I'm going to add the new light to the pixel layer is
using the paintbrush tool but before I can paint I need to select a suitable color for the light
now the easiest way to do this is by sampling another light in the scene if there is one in
this image you can see there's a light on the pier in the background if I magnify the area I can use
that to sample the color to take the sample I'll double click on the color swatch at the bottom of
the tools palette this opens the color chooser dialogue now I can click by holding the sample
tool down using my mouse then while still holding down the mouse button I can move the pointer over
the light when I release the mouse button it samples the color at that point you can see
this now appears in the dialog then when I click on the Picker it sets the color now if you don't
have a light in the image that you can sample you need to set the color manually you can do this by
using the Hue slider at the top of the dialog to set the color component after that you can click
on a point to control the brightness and the saturation although I've sampled the light in
this image I'm going to use a slightly lighter and less saturated color that's because the light that
I'm turning on in this image is in the foreground so I want to make it appear slightly brighter now
let's position a magnified area on the street light so we can see what's happening at the
moment you can see that my brush opacity flow and hardness are all set to 1 hundred percent
when I move my brush over the light you can see a preview of what will happen if I click once
whilst this looks nice and bright it also looks a little bit too hard around the edges if I reduce
the hardness to about 60 percent it'll soften the edge to produce an effect more like a bright bulb
I'll then move my mouse into position and click once to paint on the layer now let's add a second
layer to the image and this time I'll use it to light the rest of the lamp to create this effect
I'll soften the edges of the brush to about 30 percent now I can position my brush over the
lamp and set the size I'm going to use the square bracket keys on my keyboard to do this and I want
to make the brush slightly larger than the lamp I can then click once to add the lighting effect
after that I'll change the blend mode of the layer from normal to screen to produce a more realistic
glowy fact now whilst this improves the lighting it's still not entirely realistic that's because
the light is covering the black metal strips holding the lamp bulb in place what I need
to do is create a mask to hide the light where the straps are so let's turn off the two layers
and click the background layer to work with that instead there are different ways you can create
a selection to produce a mask I'm going to use the selection brush for this example it's best
to magnify the image and use a small brush size to work with don't worry if you select areas that
you don't want to you can switch to the negative mode to then remove them if you have a problem
using the selection brush I've included a link to another of my videos in the YouTube description
explaining how to get the best results now that I've made a selection I can show the two layers
again I'll then add a new mask to the layer by clicking the add mask icon at the bottom of the
layers panel if you're using Affinity photo 2 it will give you a choice of masks you want to
use the mask option which is the same as the mask that you would have advantage in the first version
of affinity photo when you add the mask you'll see that it's the reverse of what you want to fix this
first clear your selection by pressing command and D or if you're using a Windows PC that's Ctrl
and D then with the mask selected in the layers panel invert it by pressing command and I which
is control and I on a Windows PC now we can see the metal straps are hiding the light but we can
improve the effect still further I'll do this by first changing the blend mode to screen then
I'll drop the opacity of the layer to 90 percent if this makes the bulb light on the lower layer
look too bright reduce the opacity of that layer as well another Improvement that we can make is
to produce some light spell along the metal straps near to the bulb the way that I'll do this is by
painting with white on the mask using a soft brush and a low opacity now you can see the light near
the bulb is spilling over the black straps which is what happens in reality when you take a photo
like this let's now look at the effect on the entire image by zooming out the next step is to
add a third empty pixel layer because we want to produce a wider glow around the light I'll
do this by using a brush with a 40 opacity and a hardness of about 20 percent I'll then position
my mouse and click once to add the effect the effect looks okay but I really don't like the
way that it's covering up the dark lamp post I could fix this using a mask like we did before but
there is an easier way by using blend ranges I can access this control if I click the small Cog icon
in the layers panel when the layer is selected there are two sets of blend ranges which relate
to either the selected layer or the lower layers in this image I want to blend the layer based on
the lower layers of the image so I need to use the controls on the right watch what happens to
the lamp if I pull down on the left side of the line it allows us to see the black of the lamp
hiding the bright areas of the top layer I'm then going to move the white point over to the right
to see the highlights around the lamp better now for a final step which is to add some light to
the ground around the base of the lamp as before We'll add a new empty pixel layer for this I'll
then create a large brush which has an opacity of about 40 percent and a hardness of about 20
percent I can then position my mouse over the base of the lamp and click once to add the light
don't worry that this doesn't look convincing at the moment all we need to do is change the
blend mode of the layer to Overlay after that you can adjust the opacity of the different layers to
achieve the effect you want now the bit that I probably skipped over a little bit too quickly
was the blend ranges control that's because I've already produced this video explaining
it in detail go watch that next to learn how it works but don't forget to subscribe first
if you haven't already thanks for watching and I hope to see you soon for another video