Lighting Effects in Paint Shop

Author: Malva

Support Files

• masks.zip

This tutorial will teach you, in 5 easy steps, how to create special lighting/shadow effects using Paint Shop Pro 7 (or any other image editor you may prefer)

Open Paint Shop and load the black and white mask you chose and two copies of your poser scene.

In one of your poser images, create a new layer (New Layer – New Raster Layer), set the Blend Mode to Multiply and Opacity to 70. Now paste the mask.

Apply some blur on the mask layer (Effects - Blur - Blur More) and then select the Retouch Tool.

In the Retouch Options window, select Smudge and leave the box Sample Merged unchecked.

The Brush Settings are: Brush size 70, Opacity 63, Hardness 0, Density 100, Step 1.

Smugde the whole image, respecting the shape of the body. Make it so the shadow follow the curves and all the angles. (tip: arms and legs ask for round, soft shadows, while for the back you can leave it a bit more flat)

Save the image when you're done, just in case.

Copy the mask-layer you smudged and minimize the image – we'll get back to it later. Now let's work with the other render.

Go to Masks - New Mask - Hide All. Then again Masks - Edit and Masks - View Mask. Paste the mask you copied.

Go to Selections - From Mask, then Effects - Illumination Effects - Lights. For this image I chose preset Soft Light(upper right).

Change Direction to 235, Horizontal to 98, Vertical to -39, Cone Size to 86 and Asymmetry to 680.

Now delete the mask (Masks - Delete, answer No to the pop-up window).

Copy this new masked-image. Now go back to the other pic, merge (Layers - Merge - Merge All Flaten) and Crtl + L (Paste as New Layer).

Finally, go to the new layer Properties and set Blend Mode to Hard Light, lower the opacity a bit, if you want, and you're done.

You might want to play around with Blend Modes as well, to see what comes up.