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Lighting Effects Filters

The Lighting effects filters are very interesting, though I haven’t found lots of occasion to use them in my own work. Generally, when you use lighting effects, unless you use a bump map*, the image will be lit as if it were a flat object. Before discussing bump maps, I want to spend a moment discussing the effect of lighting effects on regular images.

Students often assume you can use lighting effects to brighten dark images, but this is not what they are intended to do. Lighting effects enable you to simulates an effect such as shining a flashlight on a photograph on the wall... it treats the image as a 2-dimensional object. It does not light the objects within the image properly, as if they were 3 dimensional objects. If you want to brighten an image, you’d be much better off using a Levels or Curves adjustment layer.

Q: What is a bump map?

A bump map is a grayscale image you can use in conjunction with lighting filters to create a 3 dimensional appearance. This grayscale image acts as a sort of “elevation map,“ indicating areas that are raised and others as sunken. When you apply a lighting filter, it will use the information to create the appropriate shadows and highlights.

Even though Photoshop is not really a 3-D graphics program (like 3-D Studio Max or Maya), it can use information in a bump map to create 3-D lighting effects. For example, I created this grayscale image below on a new layer.

I saved the image as an alpha channel by cutting the layer and pasting it on to an alpha channel I created (you can also CTRL click on the layer to load it as a selection and then Select > Save Selection) .

Then I created a brushed metal layer and added diagonal, semi-transparent reflective gradient above it. For the purposes of the tutorial, you could use most any basic textured background.

I duplicated the Background layer with the brushed steel and chose Filters > Render > Lighting Effects.

In the Lighting Effects dialog box at the bottom, there is a field called Texture Channel. You can choose to make any of the regular color channels into a texture channel or you can choose an alpha channel to be the texture channel. Photoshop uses the texture channel with the lighting effects to calculate shadows and highlights to create an etched or embossed effect. I chose alpha 1 as my texture channel from the drop-down list, applied a light from the upper right hand corner, and “voila!”

Of course, you can also use more than just one light, and you can tint the lights different colors, change the intensity and direction, etc.

Sometimes, you can find a good use of lighting effects aside from bump maps. In the illustration below, the application of lighting effects worked rather well to convey a 3 dimensional appearance. I had already applied reflective gradients to the large smoke stacks, but I noticed that the smoke stacks had lights shining upon them as well in my reference images. I used the Magic Wand tool to limit the area affected by the lighting effect to just the smokestack itself and applied the lighting filter, and it turned out quite well, and suggested a 3-dimensional metal smoke stack.

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