images from creative photoshop lighting techniques
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Creating Candlelight
Creating Candlelight
Candlelight is so subtle and highly flattering on the skin. Any simulated effect would have to reproduce these qualities in all their subtlety in order for it to be believable. Good selections are so critical when creating effects of this kind and using PhotoShop's colour range selection filter to pick up the natural highlights was indispensible. Extensive use of the various colour filters generated the warm light on the highlight areas of the model, leaving the rest of the scene to provide the contrast with its cold blue uninviting air. 
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Creating Glass
Creating Glass
The idea for this chapter came from a glass paperweight. But I wanted to make it more interesting by making the glass sphere distort its new environment and reflect itself in the water. I think this is one of the great things about photo editing software like Photoshop. It allows a photographer to create images that would be very difficult, very expensive or even impossible to create in the real world. There is always the additional benefit of creating an image that is clearly not real, but firmly embedded in the world of fantasy. I think this one slots into that category nicely.
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Film Noire Effect
Film Noire Effect
Dark, moody, suspenseful. Some of the ingredients that made this film genre the classic that it became. These are the emotions that I wanted to recreate using the colour image of the model in 1940's clothing. It's more than black and white. It's black and white with attitude. Black and white with that eternal quality that will never come back again. But maybe that is what makes it so classic.
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Creating Fire
Creating Fire
When the programmers at Adobe wrote the code for the Cloud Render filter, I often wonder what they had in mind and how they thought it might be used. Contrary to what many believe I think it is an incredibly useful feature. Yes it does clouds which are okay if you not too demanding. but it really comes into its own when you want to create mist, fog, textures and as I showed in this chapter, fire. Yes, it was a little more effort than lighing a match, but far less dangerous!
creative Photoshop lighting techniques
Published by Lark Photography Books New York - 192 pages
Printed in English, Chinese (complex), French and Russian
From the publisher: From bringing sunshine into cloudy day pictures to creating underwater effects, photographers can add realistic drama to their images with Photoshop. The techniques are all here, brilliantly illustrated and explained in this bestselling guide--now updated for the next version of Adobe Photoshop with new instructions and screen grabs. Find out about light sources; different types of light, such as candlelight and neon; manipulating light; and color temperature. Replicate classic studio lighting setups, and give portraits a touch of Hollywood glamour. Abundant information on shadows, projections, reflections, special effects, shortcuts for Mac and Windows, filters, and third-party plug-ins, make this is a must-have.
REVIEWS
Huggins has written the comprehensive guide to creative lighting in the age of digital photography - Digital Camera
You'll be both inspired and informed with a new arsenal of techniques - eDigitalPhoto
Below is the finished image taken from the chapter detailing how to turn a daylight scene into a moonlit night with additional atmospheric light from a flourescent sign
So many people have asked me over the years during my PhotoShop training courses about the best way to replicate the cool, ethereal quality of moonlight. So I was delighted when my publisher suggested I write a chapter for the Creative LIghting Techniques book covering that very subject.
I wanted it to have a slight fantasy air about it, something reminiscent of my childhood days watching the wonderful way Walt Disney
movies depicted the night on the streets of London or Paris. But it needed to look real also and not like something from an animation.
Working out how to make the flourescent light was as much fun as working out the moonlight. I loved the idea of trying to create the juxtaposition of the warm light of the electric sign and the cold light of the moon.
I don't know
if I succeeded, I will let my readers be the judge of that, but if I inspired a few people and they had as much fun with the techniques as I had creating them, it's a good days work. Oh, I almost forgot. My thanks to Walt for showing me what a London night should really look like!