Photoshop wonderful ii.: three-dimensional lighting magic [light and Shadow]

Article: cloudy/Blue Ideal Moderator

Next in the second part, we're going to start a magical light journey right now.

The lighting here is not the shadow of the object, but usually we see movies, animations, games inside the various cool glare effect, these effects include fire, light belt, light trajectory, spray, etc., there are particle effects.

This section will use PS to simulate these effects.

But as part of the first section, we must first understand some of the important principles and principles.

The first part of the three-dimensional tutorial , I said a very important word, do not know that we have noticed no, that is, "level." Levels bring reality. Only convincing lighting makes people feel cool. Otherwise it would not be light or light (I seem to be talking nonsense). I say this is to let everyone focus on how to shape the "level", only a delicate, rich level of sense can bring a sense of reality.

The following section will be a bit boring, some people may feel very simple, but skip, but I suggest you take a good look.

First let's do a little experiment and see what we can do with PS.

Creates a new, rectangular, blank document. Then press g to switch to the linear gradient tool. Pull out a black and white gradient.

Analyze this black and white gradient. As you can see, this white black belt from left to right produces a very smooth gradient from white to black.

We add an adjustment layer-> gradient map

Selected a blue-yellow-blue gradient preset, you can see the effect as follows:

Originally white-Black gradually became blue-yellow-blue gradient. What do you call a "gradient map"? You can look at the slider in the gradient editor. There are two triangles above, which is the change of gray level in the picture. Originally from white to black evenly distributed, right? The following three gradient triangles, then, are "mapped" to the original color by position on the new gradient.

Let's try to adjust the color of the three colors below.

Turn the color of the two sides into black, you can see that the original color of the picture into the black yellow. -Wait, is this a light? It's too easy. Indeed, there is no hierarchy, only gradients. Let's go back to the original layer and see if we can make a change.

Make sure to return to the canvas. First, choose White as the foreground color, and then select a pen brush. We pick a blurred edge brush and choose the appropriate size. As shown in figure:

Then select the Background canvas (note, not the adjustment layer)

In the background with a white painting. Did everyone notice that there was a black piece of footage coming out.

What about drawing in black? Look:

It's funny, isn't it? It's black, too. And like mud, the original white painted black "squeeze" past. Let's hide the adjustment layer and see what happens next, so that the mapping is the way it is?

Obviously, we can see that the white is mapped to black, black is also mapped to black, only the middle of the gray, is mapped to yellow. Looking back at the distribution of the triangles, we should understand what the gradient mappings are capable of.

Gradient mapping, a very simple but very important function, is to smooth, the color map in the picture to fade.

For example, the above grayscale map, we want to turn the white into yellow, gray into red, black or black, how to do? Double-click the adjustment layer and make the following adjustments:

To highlight the effect, I added a white to the rightmost key color and then let the white-black change map to a white-yellow-red-black change. Does it make people think of flames? Oh. Perhaps some people think of a previous PS tutorial , said is the production of flame word, the last step, the screen edge into the index color, and the color of black body to replace the table, and make the dark white into the fire word. How is the index color good? Not good. Why, because the color transition is insufficient. Only 256-color index, how to compare with this 24-bit gradient? The latter, of course, is smoother. But the principle is not the same? Yes, both use the concept of color mapping. I used to know that using Black's body table to make a flame effect, but I don't know what the principle is, we should take a good look at the tedious experiment.