Adobe Photoshop Tutorial: Cast Light From A Window
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Step 10: Apply The Gaussian Blur Filter
The only problem with our window lighting effect at the moment is that the edges are too sharp, which looks unrealistic. Let's soften them by applying the Gaussian Blur filter.
To do that, go up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, choose Blur, and then choose Gaussian Blur. I'm going to set my Radius value to about 5 pixels to soften my edges. If you're using a high resolution image, you'll probably want to set yours a bit higher.
Keep an eye on your image as you drag the Radius slider at the bottom of the dialog box so you can see how much blurring is being applied (it's always better to make a decision with your own eyes than to simply enter in a value that worked well for someone else's image):
Click OK to apply the filter and exit out of the dialog box. Here's my image after softening the window light edges:
Step 11: Select The Gradient Tool
These next few steps are optional, and if you wanted, you could stop here, but I'm going to add a bit more realism to my effect by reducing the intensity of the window light in the bottom corners. To do that, if you're still following along, select your Gradient Tool from the Tools palette, or press G to select it with the keyboard shortcut:
Step 12: Set White As Your Foreground Color And Black As Your Background Color
Your Foreground and Background colors should already be set to white and black respectively, but if for some reason they're not, press D on your keyboard to reset them. If you look at the Foreground and Background color swatches near the bottom of the Tools palette, you should see the top left swatch (the Foreground color) filled with white and the bottom right swatch (the Background color) filled with black:
Step 13: Select The Foreground To Background (White To Black) Gradient
With the Gradient Tool selected, white as your Foreground color and black as your Background color, Right-click (Win) / Control-click (Mac) anywhere inside the image to bring up the Gradient Picker and select the first gradient in the top left corner, the Foreground to Background gradient:
Step 14: Drag A Short Gradient From The Bottom Corners In Towards The Center Of The Image
Click your mouse just below and to the left of the bottom corner of the window light and drag a short ways in towards the center of it to add a white-to-black gradient in the corner. We're not adding the gradient to the image itself here. We're adding it to the layer mask of the Levels adjustment layer:
When you release your mouse button, Photoshop will add the short gradient to the layer mask, and you'll see the light gradually fade away as it approaches the bottom left corner:
Then do the same thing in the bottom right corner. Click your mouse just below and to the right of the bottom right corner of the window light and drag a short ways in towards its center:
When you release your mouse button, Photoshop adds the second white-to-black gradient to the layer mask, and the light appears to fade away in the bottom right corner as well:
To finish off the effect, I'm going to make the window light a bit more intense, and I'll do that next.
