Layered Lighting

Objects are illuminated by their environment in a number of different ways. Things like reflections and shininess, and directional and ambient lighting all combine to create the image that you see, with each aspect of light playing a unique role.

What is Layered Lighting?

Objects are illuminated by their environment in a number of different ways.  Things like reflections and shininess, and directional and ambient lighting all combine to create the image that you see, with each aspect of light playing a unique role.  In a PixelSquid PSD file, these fundamentals of light have each been assigned to their own layer, providing direct control over each one. 

Shine

Shine refers to the highlights that bounce from the rounds and corners of smooth surfaces.

Reflections

Reflection refers to the reflections of objects in the environment rather than lights.

Lighting

Lighting refers to the overall light bias as it falls across the object defining the light side and the dark side.

Base

The Base is the bottom-most layer of the Subject, and receives the light contributions from the layers above.

Light-Tuned Compositing

Compositing an object into an existing image can be a challenge when those images were captured under very different lighting. Direct control over the lighting fundamentals makes matching the new environmentals quick and accurate.

The crab image was captured in a bright studio environment, while the backplate was captured in a darker environment with just two light sources. To make a match, individual layers of the Crab PSD were quickly adjusted to simulate the scene lighting of the background environment.

Changes to Surface Finish

By making changes to the tone, color, and visibility of individual lighting layers it’s easy to change the finish of a surface.