Photoshop Tutorials - Manual Elliptical Lighting Effects In this tutorial there will be several lighting examples demonstrated. The lighting tool provided by photoshop just doesn't cut it; So for full control, you will want to manually add lighting effects by hand.

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There is no perfect "one way" to perform lighting effects. This tutorial is a demonstration to teach you the basics and from here, you can further improve your artistic skills in lighting. Some of the most simple steps can make an image's lighting look very complex.

	The background. Let's start simple and create a layer called "bg" Create a new document, about 250x200px. Create a layer called "background". Let's start our background color with a gradient from dark blue to dark red. With the gradient tool, create the image seen left. The shading at this point is important. The darker your background is, the more rich and solid your lighting will be. However, Too dark will make your lighting hardly visible, and too light will over contrast. The colors used in this demonstration is 052b44 -> 290e21
	Elliptical Transformed Marquee Create a layer called "Light". Create an oval marquee then angle it sideways. Right click selection -> Transform Selection Typically you can use any shape for your desired needs. More than likely this will be your most used shading angle. (Sizes will vary)
	Define shape and fill With your paintbrush, (I used size 100) fill in with white, a little more than half the circle starting from the edges. The middle should be faint as seen left. This step will define the curve when transformed. After this tutorial is completed, try different variations of shading and color.
	Create first light, The Blur Now we are going to create your main light piece. Filter -> Blur -> Motion Blur. Angle -45* , Distance 80 This is an extremely important step. Since there is no right way to create lighting, from this point on, you could make thousands of different shades and angles. Various blur angles and blur filters such as "gaussian blur" will allow different lighting effects.
	Duplicate and Overlay Your image should look similar to the one left. Duplicate this layer. Right click layer -> Duplicate Layer Change both "Light" layers to Overlay mode. (see below)
	Transform light Once both layers are on overlay, it should look like the image left. Select both layers in photoshop. (Ctrl+Click layer) Press Ctrl+T to transform both layers at the same time. You will get line guides allowing you to click the edges and transform.
	Transform light part 2 Holding down the Ctrl key, click the top left corner and bring it down to about the center. This creates your main pattern / elliptical lighting. Now you can change the size of both layers by pressing Ctrl+T. (Ensure both layers are selected) While holding down the shift key to maintain proportion you can make your elliptical lighting larger or smaller.
	The completed elliptical result As you can see to the left, when enlarged it creates a radiant glow effect, which works well with globes. However, adjusting various steps in this tutorial can give you numerous results. Save this photoshop document as "elliptical.psd" so that next time you need an elliptical light source your set to go.

Image examples utilizing the elliptical lighting effect in this demonstration.