Rendering the Spotlight effect?

[Moonie]

Is there a plugin out there that can produce the spotlight effect? Or is it something to suggest.

[Curmudgeon]

If you could post an example, it would be much more of a benefit.

So, as I'm not sure as to what you mean, the first thing came to my mind was:

Made by using Ed Harvey's nice Vignette plugin (in Effects > Photo > Vignette)

[Moonie]

I was thinking something along the lines of, without the microphone obviously, this:

Would the plugin you mentioned be able to, perhaps mixed with something else, be able to cause the effect?

[Curmudgeon]

With that particular plugin, no.

However, if it's something like this that you want:

It's a simple black background.

Draw some lines on a new layer (in contrasting color). Then magic wand in between the lines, and on a new layer, perform a linear gradient with white color to totally transparent color.

[Moonie]

Well the reason I asked for a plugin was because I'm really looking for something that will adjust the lighting of the image that I want in the spotlight for me as I don't think I'm good enough to do that myself, and well.

[Curmudgeon]

Well, then to answer your question about a plugin which does that, no, I don't think there is one.

But it's really not difficult at all to make as you see the one I did. Once the gradient is made, you can adjust it further with glow, or soften portrait.

[Myrddin]

You could even have the gradient acting from white (or the source's colour) to transparent (as in, your secondary colour at transparency of 0). Then, lower the opacity of the layer with the spotlight on so the background image shows through ever-so slightly.

With my below example, I followed these steps [bracketed numbers correspond to the image]:

• - using the line tool on a new layer I drew out the outline for the spotlight, white for the column and black for the rest [1];
  - I saved this as PNG ready for use as an alpha mask (

plugin | tutorial) - this ultimately flattened my work, so I undid this flattening with Ctrl + Z;
- deleted my mask layer;
- on a new layer (there should be two now: the background image and this new one), I filled it completely white and applied my alpha mask, leaving the column of light [2];
- using a linear gradient ( :LinearGradient: ) on Transparency mode ( :AlphaChannel: ), gradate from top to bottom, then each side individually [see accompanying PDN for clarification];
- (optional depending on background image) create a new layer, fill black, apply the same mask as before - but this time reversing it so the column is replaced - lower the opacity to darken the rest of the image, giving the impression of a darkened scene. I blurred mine also to have it 'blend' better with the light.

In order: [Original image] ... [1] ... [2] ... [Finished product]

A ZIP file containing all resources, including the PDN file with the layers named:

Spotlight.zipPlease, do have a play with the PDN file to see what each layer looks like and what I did to achieve the effect, particularly with the spotlight. It may explain it better than the above text - I am a little rushed at the moment so apologies for anything that might seem confusing.

I was quite lucky with the chosen image in that the central object already had the necessary highlights. Perhaps this should be a consideration when undertaking this. There are a few topics here on the forums that give instruction to manipulating an image to give the impression of a light source.

Does this help?

[MiguelPereira]

Does this help?

What? that mini-tutorial? Ya think? :wink:

[Moonie]

Many thanks to both Curmudgeon and Myrddin! They've certainly helped... I think I'll have to bookmark my post (: