I wish the lighting effect could be placed on a seperate layer and adjusted as needed. Maybe one day.....

Grim, i know this is just a "wish list" type of post, but what type of effect did you want to pull off?

Something like the ability to change the lighting on a figure in Poser? Or moving the lighting to give a more dramatic impact like film noir style flims. Did you have a project you want to experiment on?

:)
retrocity

What might adobe call it? Filter layers? Layer Filters? I can imagine that up-to-date computers can do the maths concerning re-calculating the pixels everytime some Filter Layer, or Layer Filters, parameter is changes. Like the position of a light. In After Effects one can blur interactively. And hours, days, weeks later, decide on a bit less. That is, I think, what I would want. Non-Destructible Non-Linear Adjustable Filter Layers! How's that for a name in the 'NEW IN PS8'advertisements!

This is a feature that I honestly think is going to be incorporated at some point in the very near future, possibly version 7.5 rather than version 8. I back this up by the fact that Photoshop and ImageReady are two of the only programs Adobe makes that don't already have this feature. Illustrator has it, Premiere has it, After Effects has it...but griping about it here is about as effective as trying to translate latin by eating spam. It just doesn't make much sense...write to Adobe, gripe to them.

Retrocity - often when I create landscapes I want to change the lighting half way before completion - so if lighting were on its own layer, it would make life easy. Trick-art who's "griping"? It was just vague a wish.

Well one thing you could try is to create a 50% gray layer and apply your Lighting effect to it, then use softlight, hardlight to combine the layers with what is below. You will not beable to readjust and enableing the bump maps bet tricky but it will keep some what indendent for the rest. It is good technic for lens flairs as well. jstuartj

Grim, as we all know PS lighting effects filter works only on one layer at a time which makes changes a big pain. But jstuartj has a good idea. 50% grey is a neutral colour so creating a layer and changing the "blend mode" to OVERLAY will let you apply the lighting effect to the whole composition (as long as you place it at the top).

If you find you need to change the intensity (decrease) of the lighting effect you just need to change the opacity of the layer. If you find you need to change it only in certain areas of your composition, you can add a "layer mask" and paint a mask with grey where you want less light. If you need to boost the light more (increase), duplicate the layer and adjust the opacity to fit your needs.

As for being able to move, rotate, change directions... who's to say you can't try the "free transform" tool on the grey layer and see...

let us know if this is of any help (or if we're WAY off base ;) )

:)
retrocity

Thanks - sounds like a good method. I'll give it a go on my next pic.

Cool idea! I played around with it a bit & it looks really useful, thanks!