Photoshop How-To: Let There Be Light

Do you want to cast a ray of light into an otherwise dark or drab photo? Photoshop's Channels can work wonders.
Written by Scott Kelby on May 24, 2006

Excerpted from "The Photoshop Channels Book." Published by Peachpit Press.

Adding a ray of light to the correct type of photo (one in which seeing a ray of light coming in through a window would make sense) can take it from boring to beautiful.


Without the light beam, this photo was only so-so.

In this tutorial, Scott Kelby will take you through drawing a light beam using the Polygonal Lasso tool; blurring the resulting Alpha channel to soften the beam's edges; and placing the beam so it's either covering your subject or casting onto a wall behind the subject.

We've posted this excerpt as a PDF file. To open the PDF file in your Web browser, click "Let There Be Light." You can also download the PDF to your machine for later viewing.

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Excerpted from The Photoshop Channels Book by Scott Kelby. Copyright © 2006 Scott Kelby. Used with permission of Pearson Education, Inc., and Peachpit Press.

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