Creating shadows in a portrait

SK
Posted By
Steven_Keels
Jul 8, 2004
Views
420
Replies
6
Status
Closed
Hello,

I have a portrait of a person that is lit evenly around the person. I would like to darken certain areas as if the light were being block by a card or gobo to create shadows.

I am aiming for the old "Hollywood Portraiture" type of effect. I am trying to make this as professional looking as possible. Are there any recommendations on how to do this, or any tutorials?

Thanks in advance, Steven
Related Tags
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L
LenHewitt
Jul 8, 2004
Judicious use of the burn tool is probably the best place to start
CK
Christine_Krof_Shock
Jul 8, 2004
….on a new layer set to either soft light or overlay with a 50% grey fill!Helps to keep that burn tool judicious

Or create a displacement map of the face and displace a roughly painted mask of shadows and highlights with the map.Play with opacity
PC
Philo_Calhoun
Jul 8, 2004
I’d do the overlay trick, or consider duplicating your layer and setting the history brush to a low opacity and in screen (lighten) or multiply (darken) mode. I’m not much a fan of dodge/burn because they do aweful things to saturations, but again if you duplicate the layer and set the top layer to "luminosity" and dodge/burn on this layer, it will work ok.
R
rwwilson
Jul 22, 2004
In my opinion one of the nicest ways to do this is with an adjustment layer, duplicate the layer by dragging it to the duplicate layer icon on bottom of layers palette that way you are working on a dupe, on THAT layer create an adjustment layer by clicking on the adjustment layer button on bottom of the layers palette, chooselevels or curves, darken the ENTIRE image, then INVERT the mask in the layers palette that was created by creating an adjustment layer by hitting CTRL-I or COMMAND-I with mac, then using a soft edged brush with WHITE in the foreground you can add the dark values from the adjustment layer to the original image.

PS, I would like to know if this was any help, and how many people out there realize the value of adjustment layers

Thanks
LB
larry_brubeck
Jul 22, 2004
Would like to see a example of these tricks, would you guys post a sample?
NB
Norbert_Bissinger
Jul 23, 2004
rwwilson wrote:
"I would like to know if this was any help, and how many people out there realize the value of adjustment layers"

Being well aware of the advantages of Adjustment layers I never use them because I do mass productions and can afford degraditions when altering the settings a few times which I seldom do. I use actions to adjust the file.

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