Welcome back to another very exciting tutorial here at the PhotoshopTrainingChannel.com.
My name is Jesus Ramirez and you can find me on Twitter @JRfromPTC.
In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to create light wraps in Photoshop.
Light wraps or light spills, as they're sometimes called, are a technique that video compositors
use to help them create better blends between the background and the foreground.
Usually, you would use a program like Adobe After Effects to create a light wrap for a
video footage.
But in this tutorial, we'll, of course, use Photoshop to apply this technique to photographs.
You can think of a light wrap as a way to simulate the ambient light in a scene that
will be cast on the subject by the background.
This effect is meant to be very subtle.
You may not even notice it, but that's the whole point.
It's all those little details that make the biggest difference in the end.
The way that we'll create the light wrap is by creating an outline of the foreground but
use the background pixels, and then, apply it to the subject in our scene.
This graphic shows how the layers are going to be laid out.
It's all very straightforward.
In my second example, I'll show you how to apply the light wrap to a scene where the
subject is indoors and in a dark area.
I'll also show you how to add ambient color to the foreground, so that it blends better
with the background.
Remember that this tutorial is showing you a technique that could be created and applied
in many different ways, and that you may find different blending modes or adjustments that
work better for your images.
It's more important for you to understand why this effect can help your composites rather
than the specific values that I'm going to use.
Also, keep in mind that this tutorial is all about light wraps, and we'll disregard other
issues that these composites may have, but I do think that these examples will help illustrate
the benefits of light wraps.
Okay, let's get started with the tutorial.
The first thing that you need to do when creating a light wrap is to make a selection out of
your subject, in this case, this woman here.
Usually, you may have a layer mask.
In this case I don't, so I'm simply going to press Ctrl, that's Command on the Mac,
and click on the Layer thumbnail, but you would click on the Layer Mask if you had one.
So the selection is made around the woman and the area that she is sitting on.
In this case, it's not going to make a difference, but you may want to only select the subject
of your image.
Anyway, so now that we have the woman selected, I'm going to disable the layer by clicking
on the Eye icon, here, and clicking on the Venice layer.
So, we're only looking at the background layer.
Then I'm going to go into Select, Modify, Expand.
This is going to expand the selection and I'm going to only expand it by a few pixels.
Two pixels will be okay.
You may want to do a few more pixels if you have a larger image.
So, once I press OK, notice that the selection gets a little bit larger, and then, I can
press Ctrl J, Command J on the Mac, to make a duplicate of that layer, and if I disable
the Venice layer, you'll see the result.
And what I'm going to do now is, once again, press Ctrl, Command, and click on the woman
thumbnail.
Make a selection out of the same shape.
Again, you may want to click on the Layer Mask, if that's how your subject is being
isolated.
So, now that I have my selection active, I can click on the Duplicate Layer on this layer
1 then go into Select, Modify, and this time, we're going to select Contract, and we're
going to contract the selection for about 5 pixels.
Again, this could be a little more if you have a larger image.
I'm going to press OK.
And notice, now, my selection is a little bit smaller and this time I'm just going to
press Delete or the Backspace key on the keyboard to get rid of those pixels, and I have an
outline of my subject.
I'm going to press Ctrl D, Command D on the Mac, to Deselect, and I'm going to click and
drag this duplicate layer above my subject, in this case, the woman, and I'm going to
double click on it to rename it, and I'll call it "light wrap."
Then, I'm going to enable the woman layer, and you'll see the result there.
I'm going to set the Blend Mode to Screen, or you can also use Linear Dodge.
Experiment with both and see how they work.
First, try Screen, then I'm going to enable the Venice layer—the background—and you'll
see the result there.
Now, obviously, it's too bright, and it's not looking very good.
The first step is to convert that into a Clipping Mask, meaning, having the light wrap layer
only affect the woman layer.
The easiest way to convert a layer into a Clipping Mask is by selecting it, then pressing
Ctrl Alt G, Command Option G on the Mac, or you can also hover between two layers and
hold the Alt key, that's option on the Mac, and click, and it does the same thing.
So, now, you see that the light wrap layer only affects the woman layer.
Now, this light wrap is a little too sharp.
I want it to be a little softer, so I'm going to have to blur this layer.
With that layer is selected—the light wrap layer, I'm then going to go into Filter, Blur,
Gaussian Blur, and 48 pixels is way too much.
I'm going to bring that down to .1, just increase it until I find something that I like.
So, in this case, about 4 pixels is good.
I'm just looking at the edges here.
I know it's a little too bright in some areas.
We're going to fix that in a moment, and I'm going to press OK.
Then, I can use the Opacity Slider to bring down the Opacity of this layer.
I'm going to click and drag that to bright, and right at about, maybe, 40% in this case
is a good number, so this is before and this is after.
If your image requires it, you can create a layer mask and paint with black in areas
that you don't want to have affected, for example, maybe, the railing here that she
is sitting on; maybe we don't want to add a light wrap to that.
That's before and that's after.
If you have some dark areas like the hair, that the effect is too strong, then we can
just mask that out, and then, go into the Fade Menu by going into Edit, Fade.
You can bring the Opacity on that down, and then, increase that accordingly until you
find something that you are happy with, maybe, something like that, and press OK.
So, this is the before and this is the after.
So, this light wrap layer helps the composition come together a little more by using light
and color that are found in the image, so that the subject and the background interact
with each other just a little bit better, and helps create a more realistic composition,
so, again, before and after.
Now we're going to work on a composition that's very similar.
The difference is that we're now in a dark room, and having the light wrap set to Screen,
which will be too bright, or Linear Dodge.
Both will be way too bright for that, and, by the way, I've already created the light
wrap.
I used the same technique as I used in the previous example.
I just created it in advance so that we could save a little bit of time.
So, I have my light wrap here.
I'm going to put that into a Clipping Mask, Ctrl Alt G, Command Option G on the Mac, and
the light wrap only affects the dancer now.
And as I said, Linear Dodge and Screen are not just going to work.
It's going to make the image too bright.
We're in a dark environment here.
So, in this case, I can use Soft Light, and, again, bring the Opacity down accordingly,
and you'll see the difference; before, and that's after.
Another thing that I want you to take a look at is in this example, if I zoom in, you'll
see that the light that's coming down hitting on the shirt, is bouncing up, and you can
see some of that pink here on the gray sweater.
That will also be true for some of the environment here.
You notice the blue green wall here, where you would expect to see some of that on her
shirt, maybe even on her face, and the rest of her body, actually.
So, one of the things that you can do to, sort of, mimic that effect, the similar effect
you see here on the sweater is by taking the background and duplicating it, Ctrl J, Command
J on the Mac, and move that up to the very, very top.
And I'm actually going to Zoom Out just so you can see what's going on.
Then, I'm going to go into Filter, Blur, Gaussian Blur, and I'm just going to blur this, up
until I lose all detail, but the color is still there.
So, maybe, about 47 pixels, in this case and I'm going to press OK.
Then, I can create another Clipping Mask, Ctrl Alt G, Command Option G on the Mac, then
I can switch the Blend Mode of this to Color, and bring the Opacity way down, maybe, all
the way to zero, and then, you can increase it accordingly until you see something that
you're happy with.
In my case, we're going to go to about 25%.
I'm going to Zoom In just so you could see some of that detail, and if I disable the
layer, see the before, and the after.
Do you see where she gets some of those blue grays on the sweater?
We're just trying to apply some of that color that's found in the environment on to the
subject so that it fits better within that environment.
If at this point you think that applying this color layer made you sort of desaturate the
image, that's okay.
If you want to saturate the image a bit more, then you can create a new adjustment layer
and go into the Vibrance Adjustment Layer, make it into a Clipping Mask.
In this case, you can just click on this icon here if you like.
It does the same thing as pressing Ctrl Alt G, Command Option G, and you can increase
the Vibrance.
So, you get a little bit of a stronger color.
It's that same blue green color that's sort of makes the environment.
Of course, there's a whole lot more that you can do to create more realistic compositions.
But in this tutorial I just wanted to show you these two quick examples that you can
use to create better compositions in Photoshop.
And that's it for this tutorial.
I hope that you enjoyed it and that you learned something new.
If you have any comments or questions, leave them down below.
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Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you again soon.