Lighting.

[inkpad.t]

Hi all.

I'm sure I've seen this topic on here some where but can't find it again.

Lighting and shadows in compositions, I'm looking more and more in to lighting and shadows in any works i do, I want to get to grips with how light reflects off different surfaces and how it changes that colors reflection on another objects or parts of the overall composition.

I know there's other factors involved such as the angle the light is hitting and area or how bright or soft the light is etc. But i just can't seem to get it right .

Is there a good article or tutorial any where that any one can point me in the right direction too. Only search Google and didn't seem to find what i was looking for, unless i miss it somewhere.

Thank you.

 

[IamSam]

Hey Inky, here is a good Tutorial on shadows and lighting.

 

[Tom Mann]

Hi Inkpad - Are you looking to light a particular type of image (eg, portrait lighting, product lighting, landscape lighting), or do you want a more general discussion? FWIW, I've seen plenty of the former, but few of the latter.

Tom

 

[ibclare]

Question from me too. It sounds like you want two different things, how to make reflections work and how to improve lighting and shadowing effects. Yes?

 

[inkpad.t]

Hi all and thanks for the replies.

Here's a screen grab of the tut IamSam pointed me to ( thank you IamSam ) and Tom , yes more a general discussion. I have probably got this all wrong but what i don't seem to get when it comes to lighting in an image is how the color changes when it reflects/bounces of other objects or areas on an object.

Hi Ibclare...in a sense yes as well.. but not actually make reflections but how the light reflects back on to other surfaces.

How it works when say take a landscape image with the sun at around midday and slightly to the right of the image . then place a model on the left, and a dog jumping up at her/him in front of them.

I get all wound up about how much of the light would be reflected on to the dog from the model as well as the light source, and what color would it be to reflect real lighting colors rather than just running a soft yellow color brush over the image as the light .

Here's that screen shot i took.


You can see that the right arm is yellowish , but the left is redish/orange.

Here's the screen shot of the light source.



Here is where i start confused. would both sides not reflect the same color giving where the light source is ? or is it something to do with distance / angle the light is hitting the object.

May be i'm looking to deep in to this and should just concentrate on where the light reflects and dos not.

I thought about drawing a line for the horizon , then one for the position of the sun . then draw lines at angles as if a sun burst just identify where the light would hit the objects/models and how far down the lines the light hits for distance.maybe this would give perspective at the same time.

Not sure if this a good idea or not .

Take that last post i did of the dog.



I only used a soft yellow color brush to do lighting on all surfaces and not even sure i got it right where it would hit the objects.
should i have used different colors like a lighter red say on the mans shirt rather than a yellow brush ?.

Thanks for all replies, hope i haven't confused the issue more but not really good at explaining things.

 

[Tom Mann]

Ahh ... for some reason, from your 1st post, I thought you were talking about real-world lighting, not the simulation of lighting efx using PS or other editing programs. Other folks on PSG (including Clare) are a lot better than me at this, so I'll step back and see what they have to say.

T

 

[Evil Nemesis]

Awesome link there Sam

 

[IamSam]

Awesome link there Sam

Thanks and your welcome!

 

[ibclare]

Ask me? Ha! I wing it. I have never looked up how to do colored light reflections. All I can claim as experience in this is observation from photography and others' work.

I don't always get light and shadows right. Some of these can be tricky and frustrating. Sometimes it isn't so crucial anyway. But yeah, I understand wanting to get perfection. So if you ever find some good instruction this in this inky, please do share!



Anyway, I think you did great. Who but you truly knows the source of the light . . .