Non-Destructive Lighting Effects

  1. 1. Step 1

    This is a great effect, that is really useful. Most of the time, when you use lighting effects, it has to be on a flattened copy of the .psd you are working on. That’s alright sometimes, but what if you haven't finished the piece yet, and want to continue to make changes to it?

    That’s where this tutorial comes in. You can take the .psd file you are working on, layers and all, and add a lighting effect to it!

  2. 2. Step 2

    The first step to using this effect is to create a new layer on top of all the other layers by pressing Shift-Ctrl-N. Fill it with a medium gray by going to Edit-Fill, and under Contents, choose 50% Gray.

    The reason why you choose this color is that 50% gray is the neutral color for the Overlay blending mode. If you fill a layer with gray, and then turn it to Overlay, there will be no change to the pixels of any underlying layers.

  3. 3. Step 3

    Run lighting effects (Filter-Render- Lighting Effects) on this new gray layer. Whatever you want to do with it is fine. I just used the default setting, and moved the light source to the upper left corner.

  4. 4. Step 4

    Now for the magic:

    Change the blending mode of the layer.

    Yep, that is it. That’s all. Nothing else.

Additional Ideas

Ok, some more information:

1.You can use bump maps on the lighting effects if you want, that turns out pretty good. Try setting the Texture Channel to the Red, Green or Blue channels of your image.

2.The best blending modes for this effect are: “Multiply,” “Screen,” “Soft Light,” “Hard Light” and “Overlay.”

3.This effect is very versatile, you can keep your layer styles intact, and your text editable. Great stuff, especially if you are doing proofs for your clients, who will want you to change your piece.