2nd try, I'd just typed a long response to this and lost it.Originally Posted by pdusen
CS6 has redone lighting effects but it's mostly UI changes, you can still make the tutorial work with only a few modifications. First of all, Adobe has an excellent tutorial on the new interface at here. That should help you get the feel for using the filter.
Now, for the mountains layer here's what I did. The default preset (chose default from the top if this isn't what loaded) is a single spotlight which is what you want. It will be shaped like an oval where the light is in the top right of the oval and it fades to the bottom left. Take that handle that's in the bottom left and drag it to the bottom right corner of your image. This will stretch the oval and have it now pointing from the top left corner to the bottom right.
Next, chose either of the handles on the side of this stretched oval and pull it to its corner of the image. You should have a circle encompassing your whole image now. Watch out though, sometimes I found while I stretched this out the light flipped directions on me, not sure why or if that's a concern.
The settings for the light are identical to what's shown on the screenshot except for a few minor differences. "Focus" is now called "Hotspot" but it still should be set to 100. Still use red as the texture but there's no "white is high" option any more, the height slider that's the default now so it's not a concern. The big difference is the height slider. I found that when I used 100 I got a ridiculously rugged result. In some ways it's cool, it almost looks like a satellite image, but it's not the result that's in the tutorial. I found that something between 5-20 for the height seems a little more reasonable. Another approach would be to use a higher height value but then increase the ambience to fill in the dark areas more. Adjust to taste. A third option could be to apply a bit of gaussian blur to the layer after the lighting effects to tone things down a bit.
The hills layer (step 17, screenshot step 1is much the same with the additional note that "omni" lights are now called "point lights". Otherwise it's the same process, create the 5 point lights and position them as noted in the tutorial, the same notes about height apply here too.
One final thought is that if you're using CS6 then you can make use of smart filters (I skipped several versions so I can't say for certain when these were released and when Lighting Effects got smart filter support). I'd highly recommend converting the hills and mountains layers to smart objects. What this will allow you to do is when you apply the lighting effects filter (or any other filters on that layer that support smart filters) it will save the settings as a smart filter on the layer. You can then continue working with the layer (such as applying the effects) and see what they look like, if you're not happy with how things are looking (too rugged, not rugged enough), double click on the lighting effects smart filter for the layer and adjust your settings. It can be a bit slow if you're working on an older system but the flexibility it gives you is huge.
Reply With Quote