CoffeeShop Tutorial: Adding Additional Window Light to a Portrait using Photoshop/PSE

Today is part 3 of my Photoshop/PSE tutorial on "Creating Memorable Portraits of Loved Ones at Home".  Part 1 covered my "home studio" using a stool by a window.  Part 2 has the "Dark and Stormy Night" B&W action download that I used on this portraits.  And today in Part 3 I will show you how I added additional photoshopped window light and a texture to really add drama to my portrait.

CoffeeShop Tutorial: Creating Custom Window Light:

I am starting with this image from Part 2 of my tutorial.  I want to add a texture and additional window light to this image to add some drama and help direct your eyes to his face and the book.

You can buy textures to add this effect to your images, but it is so easy and quick to do it yourself.  And then you can completely customize it.

1.  Add Light:  I selected my rectangular marquee tool (M) and set the feather to 50px and drew in a box where I wanted to add light. I created a new blank layer under the  B&W layer and filled this box with white. Beautiful, right?

2.  Distort Light: I went to Edit, Transform, Distort and pulled down the top and bottom of the right side of the white box.  I also moved the box to the left a bit to keep that side from being feathered.

You can tweak the light any way you want to bring focus to the main object in your image.

3.  Add Light:  I put this layer in Soft Light, 90% opacity. You can also use overlay mode.

4.  Remove Light From Face:  I added a layer mask to the light layer and used a soft black brush to remove the extra light from his face.

5.  Add Window Frame:  I added a fake window frame shadow by using a soft low opacity black brush on the layer mask and making a cross in the middle of the shadow.

6. Add Texture For More Drama:  I wanted to add texture so I used the Diptych texture from the Flypaper Texture Distressed Painterly pack.  First I made the texture B&W by clicking on it with Shift/Cmd/U to desaturate it.

I dragged this texture under the window light layer and then inverted it (Ctrl-I) to make the outer edges lighter and the inside area darker.  You can do this on any B&W texture to get customized effects.

I put the texture in Soft Light blending mode at 100% opacity and used a soft black brush to remove the texture off Imp's skin.

This is my finished edit!    I really love how this one came out.  It has captured a special time in the Life of Imp where he lives and breathes Minecraft.  :-)

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. I would love to see your own art on my Facebook page!

Do you want to download my favorite CoffeeShop PSE/Photoshop Actions and Lightroom Presets or Design Elements in one convenient zipped file AND help support this blog? Just click here for my action pack or here for a download of some of my most popular design elements, storyboards, and textures.

For complete info on installing all of my actions, click here.

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