Useful Photoshop action - Touch of Light/Touch of Darkness

[benruane]

Hi all, I wanted to share a very useful Photoshop action I came across from MCP Actions. It's called Touch of Light/Touch of Darkness. It's free to download, too.

http://www.mcpactions.com/toltod.html

I'm no Photoshop expert so I'll describe it in layman terms. Basically, upon running the action, it creates two new layers; one for light and one for dark. Then you just select the layer you want and paint over the area you want to apply the light/darkness to. Use a soft brush with 30% opacity (their recommendation).

As it's done on layers, they can be turned off if the effect doesn't work out well. I find it's really good to bring some light into shadowy areas or to shadow over too bright areas. On my Apache photo (below), among others, I painted shadows over the three people in the foreground to minimise their presence.

Cheers, Ben

 

[SeAnCoLd]

Hmm... Is this the same as duplicating the layer, darken/brighten it, adding a layer mask and then brushing on the layer mask to achieve the desired effect?

Seems like a good idea to record these actions.

 

[benruane]

Well, like I said, I'm no expert. But what you said sounds about right. There could well be more going on behind the scenes that I don't know (nor am I particularly inclined to dig further!). I suppose there's numerous different ways to skin a cat, so to speak. I've learned what little Photoshop skills I have through trial and error and my knowledge is really at a very amateur level. This one works, is intuitive and easy and best is it's free to download

Cheers, Ben