Lighting Effects - The Photoshop: Professional Retouching and Compositing Tips, Tricks, and Techniques - page 172

1. With the image file open add a new blank layer to the top of the layer stack, and
name it light .
2. Then with the foreground color set to white, choose a soft-edged white brush, size
it to 250 pixels, and place a single dot in the center of the picture. Change the
blend mode of the light layer from Normal to Overlay.
3. If you don't see the light right away, you can move it around using the Move tool,
or you can choose Edit > Free Transform and resize the spotlight by holding down
the Shift and Option/Alt keys and then dragging one of the corner transform
handles ( Figure 3.9 ).
Figure 3.9
4. To make the light source brighter, duplicate the light layer by holding down the
Command/Ctrl key and pressing J, or by dragging the light layer over the New
Layer icon at the bottom of the layer stack.
5. Put both layers (light and light copy) into a group by Shift-clicking both to make
them active and then choosing New Group from Layers from the Layers fly-out
menu ( Figure 3.10 ).