Welcome back to another very exciting tutorial here at the PhotoshopTrainingChannel.com.
My name is Jesus Ramirez and you can find me in Instagram @JRfromPTC.
In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to create Sun Flares in Photoshop.
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The effect that we're going to create in this video is that Sun Glow Effect that is really
popular in portrait photography.
It's a stylized effect that warms up the image and makes it more interesting.
Like anything else in Photoshop, there is a lot of ways of achieving this result.
For this effect, I prefer to use a Gradient Fill Layer because it allows me to work non-destructively
and it gives me a lot of control as to how the glow looks.
Also, adjustment layers don't add too much to the file size of the final Photoshop file,
so I prefer to use adjustment layers instead of pixel layers whenever I can.
But, best of all, if we create a Glow Effect using the Gradient Fill Adjustment layer,
we can save it as a preset and use it again whenever we like.
Okay, let's get started with this tutorial.
I'll be using an Adobe Stock image.
There's a link to it right below in the description.
You can download the free watermarked preview if you like or you can use your own image
to follow along.
The first step is to create a Gradient Fill Layer.
Go into the New Adjustment Layer icon in the Layers panel and select Gradient.
And we're going to get a gradient that goes from foreground color to transparent.
That is the default option.
If you don't see that, you can click on this gear icon and select Reset Gradients and press
OK.
The Foreground to Transparent Color is this one here.
You can click on it and then select Radial, and this is the result that you get.
You can, then, click on the Gradient to bring up the Gradient Editor and you can make adjustments.
The color stops at the bottom control the color.
The color stops on top control the opacity.
This is a little counter-intuitive.
This top left opacity stop, the black one, represents 100% Opacity; the white one represents
0% Opacity.
That can be a little confusing because, with layer masks, black hides and white reveals.
This color stop is the opposite.
Anyway, the top ones control opacity.
The bottom ones control color.
Currently, this one's set to black and so is the one on the right.
You can double click on the color stop to bring up the Color Picker and select a different
color.
I'm going to select white, then I'm going to press OK.
Then, I'm going to double-click on this color stop and select a light yellow; something
like that and press OK.
I'm going to press OK once again and OK a third time.
Now, this is the result and we're going to change the Blending Mode of this layer to
Hard Light.
The change won't be dramatic, but this is the Blending Mode that we want.
I'm going to double-click on the Gradient Fill thumbnail to bring up the Gradient Fill
window once again.
I can, then, click and drag on the canvas and move that around.
I can adjust the scale to make my glow smaller or larger.
I can come into the gradient and continue adjusting it.
I'm going to click and drag the yellow color stop to the left to make the glow more yellow.
If you'd like to, you can adjust the opacity stops to show more of those colors or maybe
less by bringing this one to the left.
For now, I'm just going to keep this one all the way to the right, and the black one, I'm
going to move slightly to the right.
I want that center of the circle to be pure white and not have any transparency.
I think the yellow maybe a little too strong so I'm going to double-click on the color
stop to bring up the Color Picker and I'm going to make this yellow just a little bit
lighter.
Then I can click and drag and position it accordingly.
The scale might be a little too much.
I'm going to bring that down and I can place it anywhere I want, right in-between the trees
is where this looks a little more realistic.
For now, I'm just going to place it right about here where we had it and I'm going to
press OK.
That's before and that's after.
To make this a little more realistic, I'm going to click on the background layer and
create a Selective Color Adjustment Layer.
This is going to allow us to give color to this image so that the glow feels more natural.
In the Selective Color Adjustment Layer, I'm going to select Neutrals.
I'm going to add a little bit of yellow to them and reduce cyan to get red; that's before
and after.
This sort of warms up the image a little bit, allowing for the glow to look more realistic.
At this point, you can make further adjustments to refine the glow.
I'm going to double-click on the Gradient Fill thumbnail, then double click on the gradient,
to bring up the Gradient Editor, and I can actually add a third color to make things
a little more interesting.
So, if I just click on the empty space on the gradient, I can create a black color swatch.
I can double click on it and make that one red, then press OK.
I can then fine-tune this color stops to determine how much red I want.
If I want a really stylized effect, I can drag the yellow stop to the left so we get
a little more red on the outer edges of the glow.
I'm going to press OK, press OK once again, and now I can adjust the Selective Color Adjustment
Layer to include more red, so I'm going to go into the cyan and reduce it even further.
And also going to the blacks and reduce the cyan there as well.
Notice how the shadows are going to catch some of that red, making this image a little
more realistic.
This is before and that's after.
One of the reasons I like using this technique is that Photoshop allows me to save this Gradient
Fill as a swatch to use at a later time.
If I double-click on the Gradient Fill thumbnail, click on this down pointing arrow, I can click
on this gear icon and select New Gradient.
I can call it Sun Flare and press OK.
And here it is at the bottom of the list, so, if I were to cancel this, delete this
Gradient Fill layer, and start from scratch with a New Gradient Fill Layer, I can select
that preset from the list.
I'm going to click on that, then go to Style, Radial, and here it is once again.
I can adjust the scale and make it really small or make it really large and click and
drag this to the edge of the canvas.
I can, of course, edit it, so maybe I can remove the red color stop, so only have the
yellow, or remove the yellow color stop and only keep the white one.
I'm going to press Ctrl Z to undo, that's Command Z on the Mac, and I'm going to press
OK and I can continue adjusting this glow any way I want.
If we only keep the yellow glow, we would have to adjust the Selective Color Adjustment
Layer.
So, we can just click on the Reset button and go into the Neutrals, add a little bit
of yellow.
Go into the blacks, add a little bit of yellow and reduce the cyan just a tiny bit, just
to warm it up a little bit.
And don't forget to change the Blending Mode of the Gradient Fill Layer to Hard Light.
And that's it for this tutorial.
I hope that you enjoyed it and that you learned something new.
Don't forget to click on that Subscribe button and share this video with a friend.
Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you again soon.