Render Filters


The Filter Render submenu contains an interesting mix of lighting surface effects.

Clouds and Difference Clouds

These two Render filters produce ethereal, vaporous cloud formations. to apply either of these filters to your image, simply choose the command. A hazy mixture of foreground and background colors fills your selection. Choose the filter again, and the cloud pattern changes. Every time you choose this filter, the cloud patterns shift. If you hold down the Option/Alt key while choosing, the colors create a more pronounced effect. Difference Clouds works in the same way as Clouds, but you end up with inverted colors (if you started with blue sky and white clouds, you now get orange sky with black clouds). Apply the filter again and your colors reinvert, back to blue and white.

Fibers

New  

This new filter automatically renders a surface resembling woven fiber in the foreground and background colors. In the Fibers dialog box (see Figure 20.35), you can control the variance and strength. The Variance slider controls how the fibrous texture is applied and how the colors are distributed. Lower values produce longer fibers, while higher values produce short fibers with a more varied distribution of color . The Strength slider controls the density of the fibers. Lower settings spread the fibers out over a larger area. Higher settings condense the width of the fibers and shorten their length. Click the Randomize button to see variations of the fibers. When you apply the Fibers filter, the image on the targeted layer is replaced with the effect. You can mitigate the effect after you ve applied the filter and superimpose the fibers over an image by choosing Edit Fade Fibers and moving the slider to the left.

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Figure 20.35: The Fibers filter dialog box

Lens Flare produces a simple lighting effect. A preview box shows a replica of your image where you can move the pointer to find your flare center. The Brightness slider enables you to adjust brightness from 10% to 300%. Three lens shapes are offered : 50 “300mm Zoom, 55mm Prime, and 105mm Prime. The result is a refraction, like light glinted back off a distant object.

Note  

Lens Flare and Lighting Effects, a much more powerful lighting tool, operate only on RGB images.

Note  

Some of these effects require a long time to compute and render.

Lighting Effects Filter

The Lighting Effects dialog box offers a wide range of options for simulating the play of spotlights or floodlights over your image (see Figure 20.36). Imagine you re hanging lights in a gallery, shining a flashlight into a dark cave, or driving down a wooded road at night. Any of these lighting situations can be duplicated with these versatile options.

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Figure 20.36: The Lighting Effects dialog box

At the top of the dialog box, the Style list provides a wide array of lighting styles. These preconfigured effects can serve as a starting point to add your own touches. In addition, the Light Type area enables you to create your own effects, which you can then save to the Style list. You re given options for Intensity and Focus, and you can choose a color for your light effect. You can define properties such as Gloss (Matte or Shiny finish), Material (ranges from Plastic to Metallic), Exposure, and Ambience. A color swatch lets you define the tint of the Ambience, which refers to ambient or overall lighting, separate from the spot or special lighting.

In the Texture Channel section, you can designate one of the channels (red, green, blue, or alpha) as a texture map ”that is, a grayscale image in which the light areas become peaks and the dark areas become valleys. If you uncheck the White Is High box, the effect is reversed and the white areas become the valleys. Pick a Height somewhere between Flat and Mountainous, and you re set.

Inside the Preview area, you ll see a lighting footprint that shows you how the light source you ve chosen will be applied. If you re working with a Spotlight or Omni, you can grab the handles and change the shape of the light. Clicking the Focus Spot (the end of the preview radius) enables you to change the angle of lighting. You can change the angle but not the shape of a Directional style of light. Keep in mind that the smaller the light footprint, the brighter or more intense the light. As you increase the size of the footprint, the light spreads out and dims accordingly . When you get an effect you like, click the Save button. Photoshop invites you to name your new lighting style, which will then appear in your Style list.

Figure 20.37 (also shown as Figure C38a “c in the color section) demonstrates a few lighting effects. LFX_Dummy.psd is included in the ch20 folder on the CD for you to experiment with lighting effects.

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Figure 20.37: Examples of the Lighting Effects filter: The original image (left); default light expanded and rotated so that the source is from below (middle); RGB lights moved to various locations (right).



Photoshop CS Savvy
Photoshop CS Savvy
ISBN: 078214280X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 355

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