Lighting left side of an image

[joshft91]

Hey guys! So I'm working on a little banner here, and here's what I've got going on.


Here's the original banner - I like pretty much everything about it, except for the fact that it's a big too dark on the left hand side and makes it tough to read.



Here's the second banner which is a bit lightened, but this is where I'm having a bit of trouble.



The second image is good brightness-wise on the left hand side, and here's what I did to get it like that:
Went into gradient overlay, set opacity to 7%, angle to 180, and scale to 10%. The style is set to linear.


If you look closely, you'll notice that though the left side is good in the 2nd one, the right part of the image was dimmed a bit. I'm wondering how to brighten just the left side part, up through the 2nd "s" in the word "mass".


Thanks all!

[NamanyayG]

You have two ways to do so -

1) Layer styles - Linear gradient - Light on left side, to darker on right
2) New layer - make a box that comes over the part you want to highlight - Heavily gaussian blur it - Ctrl+Click text thumbnail - Ctrl+Shift+I - go to white box layer, and press delete - Turn opacity down/change blending mode to overlay/soft light.

[Hoogle]

Cant you just take the original 1 add an exposure adjustment layer, Increase the exposure until the left side looks good then on the layer mask take the black to white gradient tool and drag the gradien across giving you a subtle fade.

[joshft91]

Thanks for the replies - I just got up so I'll mess around with it for a bit. But I'll post the psd in case you guys wanted to screw with it quick ;)

The psd you guys got is the original with no lighting changes.

[Hoogle]

how about something like this Makes the text stand out a bit more

[dv8_fx]

H.... I was thinking the same thing.... lol....

[joshft91]

I think that might have been the best way to go. Here's what I did - just added a little outer glow to it.