In this Photoshop tutorial,
I'm going to show you how to add light rays to your photos in 5 easy steps!
The first step is to create a new Gradient Fill with grayscale noise.
Let me show you how to do that.
Go into the new fill or Adjustment Layer icon and select the Gradient Fill
from here,
Make sure that you set your style to "Angle"
and click on the gradient to bring up the Gradient Editor.
All you need to do is set the Gradient Type to Noise
and you'll get this pattern that you see here
and you can control the Noise with these sliders.
change the color mode to HSB:
Hue, saturation, and brightness.
And bring the Saturation all the way to the left,
so that you get a black and white gradient.
If you're unhappy with the result,
you can click on the Randomize button until you get something that looks good.
You're basically trying to get something
that looks like this.
Something without a strong seam.
This is looking very good.
So I'll press OK
and I'll press OK one more time.
The second step is to hide the dark pixels
on this layer to create the illusion of light race.
To do so, you can change the Blending Mode on this Gradient Fill Layer to Screen.
The screen Blending Mode hides dark pixels and it keeps the bright ones.
The third step is to place the light rays into position.
All you need to do is double-click on the Gradient Layer Thumbnail,
then click-and-drag over the image to reposition the light rays.
You can place them anywhere that you want,
even outside of the canvas,
but I'll place it on this bright area behind her head.
In this case, I really like the gradient,
but in case you don't like your gradient, you can adjust the angle to something else;
And you can see how it rotates to a different direction.
But I'll keep mine at 90 degrees because that looks pretty good.
The fourth step is to fine-tune the gradient.
In this case, I'll show you two different techniques
to help you enhance the gradient.
First, you can go into the new Adjustment Layer icon
and create a Levels Adjustment Layer.
Clip it to the layer below so that it only affects a gradient fill in nothing else.
And I can adjust the contrast of that Gradient Fill,
to adjust how the light beams affect the image.
This is totally subjective, of course,
and the settings that you use depend on the darkness of your gradient.
Also remember that we're using the Screen Blending Mode
So making the layer darker
will make it less visible and making it brighter will make it more visible.
So again, you may or may not need to use this technique,
but you may want to use the second technique.
Let me show you how to apply a color to the light rays.
Start by going into the new Adjustment Layer icon
and select the Hue and Saturation Adjustment Layer
clip it to the layer below as well.
Check the Colorize checkbox to apply a color.
And from the Hue slider,
just select an orange color like this one.
And increase the saturation a bit.
And this looks pretty good.
The fifth and final step is to selectively apply the light rays over the image.
I don't want the light rays covering the entire image
and I'm going to use a Layer Mask for that.
But you need to be careful.
There's something weird going on in Photoshop with gradients and Layer Mask,
and I'm going to show you how to fix that issue.
So make sure that you stick around until the end.
First, I'll scroll down to my Gradient Fill Layer
and I already have a Layer Mask by default.
If I press Ctrl I on Windows, Command I on the Mac,
I can invert that Layer Mask
to make it completely black
so that all the pixels are hidden.
And with the Brush Tool I can paint
with white to selectively reveal the light beams over my image.
Now, I'm going to increase my brush size
by tapping on the right bracket key on the keyboard
and I'll hold Shift and tap on the left bracket key
to reduce my Brush Hardness so that I can paint with a soft brush.
And when I paint over the canvas, watch what happens.
I get the light beam, you can see the light beam there.
But notice it as I paint
the center of that light beam moves
and that can be very confusing.
Let me show you how to disable that.
It's not as intuitive as you may think
to disable the light beam from moving as you paint,
what you need to do is unlink the Layer Mask from the layer
and also the double-click to the side of the layer
to bring up the Layer Style window,
and make sure that you check Layer Mask Hydes effect.
Once you check that box,
notice at the center of the light beam went back to where I had it originally.
I'll press OK.
Enable the Layer Mask.
And when I paint, you'll notice now that the light beams will stay in place.
Next, I'll feel the Layer Mask with black.
Black is my background color
So I'll press Ctrl Backspace on windows, Command Delete on the Mac
to fill with my background color
you can paint with white over the Layer Mask
to selectively bring back the light beams.
And this is my result.
Next, let me show you one final extra tip
that may help you in some cases.
Depending on the image that you're working with, you may want to blur the light rays.
Let me show you how to do that.
You can right click on your layer,
convert it to a Smart Object and go into Filter Blur, Gaussian Blur.
And by blurring the beams, you can get a much more realistic effect.
If you decide to try out this technique,
feel free to share it on Instagram with the hashtag #PTCVIDS.
I would love to see what you came up with.
My name is Jesus Ramirez.
Thank you so much for watching.
I'll talk to you again in the next Photoshop tutorial!