Adobe Photoshop Tutorial: Cast Light From A Window

Step 2: Select Around The Inside Of The Window

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Now that our window photo is inside our main image, we need to make a selection around the inside of the window.

Depending on the window you're using, the Rectangular Marquee Tool or the Elliptical Marquee Tool may be all you need to select it. Be sure to check out our tutorial on the Full Power Of Basic Selections if you need help with adding to, subtracting from, or intersecting with selections.

For more complex window shapes, the Pen Tool may be your tool of choice, which is what I used here to select around the insides of all six window sections (check out our full tutorial on Making Selections With The Pen Tool) if you need help:

Step 3: Delete The Window Layer

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With the window shape now selected, we no longer need the window photo inside our main image, so click on the window layer ("Layer 1") in the Layers palette and drag the layer down onto the Trash Bin icon in the bottom right corner of the Layers palette to delete it:

This will delete the window layer, but the selection we just made remains:

Step 4: Invert The Selection

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We're going to use a Levels adjustment layer in a moment to darken the image everywhere except in the area that was inside the window, which is going to give us our "light shining from a window" effect. To do that though, we need to have everything except the area that was inside the window selected, but at the moment, we have the exact opposite. We have the area that was inside the window selected, while the rest of the image is not selected. To fix that, we need to invert our selection, which basically means we need to swap the selection around so that what's currently selected becomes deselected, and what is currently not selected becomes selected. To do that, all we need to do is go up to the Select menu at the top of the screen and choose Inverse, or we can use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Ctrl+I (Win) / Shift+Command+I (Mac).

Whichever way you choose, you'll see a selection box appear around the outside edges of your image, which tells us that everything in the image except for the area that was inside the window is now selected, while the area that was inside the window has now been deselected:

Step 5: Add A Levels Adjustment Layer

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Click on the New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette:

Then choose Levels from the list of adjustment layers that appears:

This will bring up the Levels dialog box, and we're going to use it to darken our image and create our lighting effect next.