Cast Light From A Window

Summary: Give an ordinary photo a more focused and dramatic look to it by creating a light source that appears to be shining through a window onto your main subject.

Written by Steve Patterson
Exclusively for Photoshop Essentials.com.

Part of our complete collection of Photo Effects tutorials.

In this Photoshop Effects tutorial, we're going to learn how to take an ordinary photo and give it more focus and impact by creating a light source and shining it on the main subject through a window. You'll need the photo you want to add the lighting effect to, as well as a photo of the window you want to use. If you don't have a photo of a window, just do a quick search on the internet for one, since it's really just the shape of the window we'll be using, not the window itself.

To create the lighting effect, we'll be using a Levels adjustment layer, along with its layer mask, and we'll see how we can use a layer blend mode at the end to enhance the light even further. It may sound complicated, but it's really very easy. The great thing about this effect is that there's lots of room for creativity, since there's no need to limit yourself to using only windows as the object the light is shining through. With a little imagination, you can shine light through any shape you can think of for some truly interesting and unique results!

Here's the image I'll be starting with, a very simple photo of a woman standing in front of a wall. The wall itself is so bright that it's a bit difficult to see the woman's face:

Here's how the photo will look after altering the lighting, giving it the appearance of a single light source shining from a window onto the woman and the wall behind her, which gives the photo itself a more focused and dramatic result. The woman's face is also now clearly visible:

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Let's get started!

Step 1: Drag The Photo Of The Window Into The Main Image

To start things off, you'll need both your main image and the photo of your window open in Photoshop. We've already seen my main image, and here's the photo of the window I'll be using:

Photoshop Lighting Effects: Open both of your photos in Photoshop.

With both photos open in their own separate document windows, select your Move Tool from the Tools palette:

Photoshop Lighting Effects: Select the Move Tool.

You can also select the Move Tool by pressing V on your keyboard. Then, with the Move Tool selected, click anywhere inside the photo of the window and drag it into the main image's document window:

Photoshop Lighting Effects: Drag the window photo into the main photo's document window with the Move Tool.

When you release your mouse button, the photo of the window will appear inside the main image:

Photoshop Lighting Effects: The window now appears inside the main image.

If you look in your Layers palette, you'll see your main image on the Background layer, and the window photo above it on its own layer, which Photoshop has named "Layer 1":

Photoshop Lighting Effects: Photoshop's Layers palette showing our two layers.