Photoshop tutorial: Let the sun shine through the clouds

Author: Ximumu Source: ximumu.cn

In this tutorial, I will show you how to make a beam of sunlight shine through the clouds on a rainy day. The techniques I will show you can also be applied to other places. I originally wanted to A beam of light shines through a tree and onto the ground. The most important part of this technique is to allow the beam to emanate from the image, giving the light a real feel. If you feel a sense of excitement, follow along Let me see how to do it…

Rendering:

Step one:

Select the background layer and drag this layer to the new icon of the panel to copy the layer and name it: light beam base. (Mumu: You can also press ctrl+J directly) Press ctrl+M to open the curve panel. The curves have precise control, so we can create a small white cloud in the image to increase contrast. About one-third of the way to the top left of the image, these are the white areas where the light beam will shine through later.

Then select Filter–Blur–Gaussian Blur and its value is 2PX.

Step 2:

Close the light beam base layer and select the background layer. Select the Polygonal Lasso Tool in the toolbox and set the Feather value to 50px.

Use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to draw an area on the image. Here I’m using the quick mask mode.

Create a new Curves adjustment layer on the background. The automatic curve layer mask is used here. Adjust the curves as in the first step, but this time we adjust the content inside the selection, while the shadows outside the selection are not affected. And name this layer: light source.

Step Three:

Open and select the light beam base layer, then select the Single Column Marquee Tool in the toolbar. Press ctrl+space to enlarge the white area, then select a white area and use the marquee tool to draw a selection.

Press alt+space to shrink the image so that you can see the entire image, then select the Marquee Tool and use the subtraction and increase attributes to remove the excess on the left, and the same on the right. This way we get a single-column selection within the white area.

On top of the light beam base layer, create a new layer and name it: beam1.

Step 4:

Close the light beam base layer, select the beam 1 layer, use free transformation, drag the selection to the bottom, then hold down shift/ctrl to make the shape you like.

Note that using this kind of free transformation looks a bit stiff. Because this is the effect of PS processing a single column. This sub-player technique is called “pixel extension”. You can change its style to get the effect you want.

Step 5:

Change beam 1 blending mode: screen. Press ctrl+M to open the curve panel and control the curve until the beam appears.

Select the layer mask button at the bottom of the panel, select the layer mask, press ctrl+M to pop up the curve box, set the curve down to 50%, and confirm.

Select the Polygonal Lasso tool on the toolbar, set the feather to 15px, and draw a selection starting from the white area. As shown in the picture, I made a mask here to let you see it more clearly.

Select the beam 1 layer and press ctrl+M to pop up the curve dialog box.��And set it as follows so that the light source in the center looks brighter than the edges.

Step 6:

Select the gradient tool and give this beam a gradient from black to white. (Can be set in the gradient toolbar.) Drag the gradient from the head to the bottom of the water, select edit>fadegradient on the menu sample. Reduce the fade in and out by 50%, and create a beam attenuation here.

Using the fade-in and fade-out function will prevent the light beam from disappearing at the bottom.

Step 7:

Create a new layer on the background layer, select the Elliptical Marquee Tool on the toolbar, and draw an ellipse with the boat in the center. As shown in the picture:

Press Q on the keyboard to quickly enter the quick mask mode, select Filter–Blur–Gaussian Blur, with a radius of 5px. Filter–Blur–Motion Blur. Angle 0; distance 150PX; click Q again to exit the mask.

Use the Curves adjustment layer to make the light a little brighter than the water until the light looks like it is hitting the water.

Step 8:

To add contrast to the entire image, add a Curves palette above the layer and set it as shown below:

Repeat steps 3 to 7, and then add light beams to other white areas. One thing to note here is to consider clearly the angle from which the photo was taken. Make the beams appear to come from the same light source. In this example tutorial I use three identical beams.