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[toggle title=”Video Transcription”]Instantly Stylize Your Photos in Adobe Photoshop Using Optical Light Effects Video Transcription

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Hey, hey everybody. I’m Sean Mullen from Rampantdesigntools.com. Today I’d like to show you how you can instantly stylize your photos in Adobe Photoshop using optical light effects. Before we go any further though, go ahead and check out the description of this video. You’re going to see a free 4K download link. Go ahead and click that. That’s going to allow you to grab a ton, a fist full, a boatload, whatever you want, a giant bucket full of 4K effects that you can go ahead and use and follow along with us absolutely free.
All right, so what are optical effects? I get that question a lot. Well, what it means is we’re not generating this in a box. We’re not using a plugin. We’re not creating it using filters or anything like that. These are real lights that I shoot in our studio at super high resolution. Everything I create at Rampant is 2K, 4K, 5K or higher. What does that mean? Well, if you’re not in the video and film world, 5K is just a fancy term of 5000 pixels wide. Because we shoot our stuff so large, you can actually use it in photos. Most of the people who use our stuff use it in video and film. Well, that’s great, but we shoot such high resolution that you can actually use this to grade and stylize your photos. Enough of my jibber jabber. Let me show you what I’m talking about.
Here’s this cool wedding shot right here. It’s neat. It’s well composed. I like it, but I want to add my own texture to it. I want to make it my own. What do I do? Well, personally, I’m going to go ahead and grab one of our bokeh effects and drop it into the shot, like this. See, right here we’ve added a little bit of texture, a little bit of color, some bokeh, and it’s beautiful. Well, you’re going to say something like, “Well, I don’t do weddings,” or whatever. Okay, doesn’t matter. This works on pretty much any kind of photo that you’re dealing with. Let me show you this surfer. This is a cool shot, but when I think surfing, I think 8mm, 16mm, gritty. I like to add a little bit of texture to these shots. What would I do? Well, I’m going to grab an impact light from Rampant and go ahead and drop it on. See? Boom. Nice little edge light to give it a little color, a little texture, compete with the green a little bit.
That’s what I’m talking about. Let’s go back to the bride and groom and I’ll show you exactly what I’m talking about. Let’s turn off this bokeh layer, go back to our raw shot. It’s pretty good. First thing we need to do is go to File, Open [00:02:00]. I’m going to bring our bokeh effect like I talk about. You can go ahead and follow along. Grab your free bokeh clips and drop it onto your shot as well. All right. This is what’s awesome. I love this about Photoshop. I can bring in a full 4K Quicktime into Photoshop without any problems, and I can scrub through. This is awesome. What I’m going to do is I’m just going to find a frame that I like. This is pretty cool. I’m going to select all and hit Copy. I’m going to go back to my bride and groom shot and hit Paste.
Now, 4K is really large. It’s 4000 pixels wide, so I have some room to play. This image is actually 2600 pixels wide, so we have quite a bit of room to play here, as you can see. How do I get the bokeh onto the background. Well, I’ll use this blending mode. Change it from Normal. Let’s start with Screen. Now let’s just repo this to get the desired effect I’m looking for. That’s pretty cool right there. Okay, we can always experiment with blending modes. I can switch it from Screen to Overlay, see what happens. That’s pretty cool, maybe a little too intense for a wedding. I can go to Linear Dodge if I really want to get a much brighter kick. I think I’m going to stick with Screen on this particular effect. That’s pretty cool.
Of course, if that’s not the exact bokeh that you like, just go back to the bokeh clip, or any other bokeh clip for that matter, and just find the frame that works for you. Maybe I don’t want something up here in the corner. Maybe I just want like this. Go ahead and hit Copy and hit Paste. Turn off the layer beneath it and switch it from Normal to Screen. Then repo it as you like. Pretty cool. Okay, you might be like, “Well, I don’t do weddings.” Okay, no problem. Let’s go back to that surfer that we showed. Remember, I put on this cool little bit of edge lighting? Once again, if I want to get an edge light, I just go to File, Open, and I pick any of the number of edge lighting or impact lights that we have.
I’m going to pick this impact light here from the Rampant Library [00:04:00]. I’m just going to scrub through until I see what I like. That’s pretty neat. I’m going to take one from the left side this time. Select all, hit Copy, and go over to my surfer and hit Paste. Of course, this is bigger than the image that I’m using so I have some room to play. Then switch it from Normal to Screen. I’m going to pull it over to the side to make the left side have a little bit of color. If I don’t like it, I can always pick something from another frame, or I can just, of course, rotate it and put it back on the right side, and then pull it over.
Again, you can play with blending modes. Go from Screen to maybe Overlay? That’s cool, maybe it’s a little too dramatic. I could, of course, dial down the opacity if I wanted to and then pull it over. That’s pretty neat. It adds some pretty dramatic color there, but I’m going to go ahead and stick back to Screen, or maybe if I really want to punch it, put it to Linear Dodge. It’s kind of neat. Of course, I could re-up my opacity there. That’s a little nuclear for me. Cool. Onto the next thing.
We’ve got this really cool vintage car shot. It’s already pretty well stylized, so you’re thinking, “Well, what would I do to this?” Well, what if you wanted to add just a little bit of splash of color, like so? That’s pretty neat. Now, just like any Rampant product, if you can do this once, you can do this a thousand times. To get this effect is the same as we’ve just done twice. Go to File, Open. Let’s go ahead and grab … I’m using a flash transition for this particular look. Go ahead and open that up. I’m going to scrub through here until I find a frame that I like. I want a little bit of white and a gradient to purple kind of thing, so go ahead and select all, hit Copy. I’ll go back to the shot [00:06:00], turn off the previous one, and hit Paste. Of course, I’m going to go from Normal to Screen.
That’s cool, but it’s a little much so I’m going to go ahead and pull it just a little over to the left there, just to give it a little hint. Of course, I can dial down the opacity if I just want a little hint of color. Again, I can switch it from Screen to maybe Overlay. That’s very cool, very dramatic. If it’s too much I can go to Linear Dodge. That’s pretty bright. Always experiment with blending modes. Let’s say, okay, that’s just too much. I wanted just a hint of purple like I had before, like this one right here, just a little, tiny bit.
What I can do is I can go back and I can scrub through to find just a little bit of this. Here you go. Hit Paste, Screen. There you go, just a hint of purple. I can even pull it over just a little bit more so you’ve just got a little hint of purple. Of course, if you want to adjust the brightness, you can go to levels and you can increase or decrease the brightness however you like. You can also change the color if you’re looking for a different color effect. Because these are optical elements in super high res, you have a lot of latitude to play with.
All right, like I’ve always said, if you can do this once, you can do this a thousand times, so let me show you a slightly different way of using these very same elements. Check out this shopping shot. It’s pretty standard. I do a lot of promotional material for big clothing companies, and we always get shots like this. Well, oftentimes we have to have our still imagery match the video imagery campaign that we’ve already created. It’s not typically this flat. You could go ahead and you can color correct this, or you could use our elements to give it a nice gradient, like so. As you can see, this punches up the image really, really nice. It’s just using one of our optical light elements. I’ll show you the raw element here [00:08:00].
This is what the raw element looks like. It’s this nice, beautiful gradient light. All we’ve done is change it from Normal to Overlay which really kicks it up. Right here it gets a little too bright for my tastes, so I went ahead and I dialed the opacity down just a little bit. Still getting some nice, beautiful color effects, but not too bright. See, you can easily just color grade your shot using these elements. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a big, old light effect that you notice. This is a nice, subtle way of changing the look and tonality of your shot. Again, of course, I’ll show you how I did this. I’ll go to File, Open. For this particular shot I’m using a gradient light overlay. Let’s just scroll through here, find something that we like.
I like this a lot. You’ve got the multiple colors, the gradient. Go ahead and select all, hit Copy, go back to our window shopping shot, turn off the previous layer, and hit Paste. We’ve got this really nice gradient. Of course, you can move it around to do whatever you’d like. I’ll put it right there. I’m going to switch it from Normal to Overlay. Again, really nice colors, but it’s really blowing this out, and I don’t want that. I’m going to go ahead and dial down the opacity just a little bit. There you go. Within a matter of seconds, you’ve basically given a whole new color grade to the shot just based on a light effect. Pretty cool.
Our last and final shot, we’ve got this cool shot. Again, it’s pretty stylized. It’s got a nice vignette to it, nice lighting. What would you do to it? Well, oftentimes we’re asked to add just a little bit of texture and color to this kind of stuff. For this I’m just using a nice, soft reflection element from our reflections library. I’ll go ahead and I’ll hit File, Open, and I’ll pick one of our reflections. [00:10:00] Here, I’ll just look for something, some kind of texture that I like. That’s pretty cool. Select all, hit Copy, turn off the previous layer, and I’ll hit Paste. As you can see, these shots are really large. I can move them around.
That’s pretty cool. Now turn it from Normal to Screen. I think I’ll reposition. That might be taking a little too much away, so maybe I’ll dial the opacity down just a little bit, just to give it a little bit of texture. Of course, I could switch it to Overlay or any of the other blend modes to experiment. That’s a little intense there. I think I’ll go back to Screen. I can also rotate it and reposition it wherever I want. Again, very dramatic. As you can see, you can very quickly stylize or grade your image just by grabbing a still frame from one of our Quicktime movies and hitting Paste, and changing the blend mode.
That’s about it. If you can do this once, you can do this a thousand times. We literally have thousands of 2K, 4K, and 5K resolution Quicktime videos that you can choose from, all kinds of optical light effects. Everything is real. I really appreciate your time. Go ahead and make sure to download those free 4K effects and try it out on your own photos. Go ahead and let us know what you think. Leave some comments, send us some messages. We always love hearing from you guys. It’s great to always talk to you all. Go ahead and follow us on Twitter @rampantdesign, or on Facebook at facebook.com/rampantmedia. Until next time, I’m Sean Mullen from Rampant Design Tools. Thanks for watching.

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