Light Painting Using Photoshop.

Using Photoshop, I could create simular results to actual light paintings by drawing them out with various tools, I could start with an existing picture or work on a black background (which acts as the darkness).

The first step was to open the photograph I wanted to work on, or open a new international sheet of paper and set it to portrait or landscape when working on a black background.

After doing this it is important to create a new layer to start your drawing on, in the windows tab click layer so that this is open for you to do so. Then using the pen tool, I chose freeform to draw my line that would then be the light (making sure this is done on my new layer so I delete it without deleting the picture/background if anything goes wrong). Afterwards, on the windows tab open the brush palette and paths. On the brush palette you can choose the colour you want you're light to be, I also edited the thinkness, added a jolt to it by changing the scattering which appears on the layers tab if you select blending options. For the light to look more realistic, you can add an inner and an outer glow to the colour and size of your choice, I made my outer glow lighter for a more realistic effect and also tried it the other way around. Once happy, on the paths tab your pencil lines should be seleted, click paths and stroke path, select brush and make sure stimulate pressure so the brush creates 'light' that is of equal pressure. This converts the brush settings into the line so that it now looks like light. As you can see from my examples below I have also added dots and other various light shapes, I did this by clicking on the brush and putting a high amount of spacing so as I draw spaced out dots are created, I also adjust the size of the dots and used different ones in my light paintings.

For my first attempt I just created a basic load of random lines to see what effect it made on a photo with a dark background, I preferred the real light drawings because they obviously looked more like light.

For this one I used my portrait photograph of my cousin, before I started I used the image tab, then adjustments then hue/saturation and selected the colourize box, I then chose the colour I wanted the image to be rather than black and white or full colour because I thought this would go well with the colour of the light chose.

I did the same for this one but chose a brighter colour, I liked what the light drawings on photoshop could do on top of existing images because I hadn't been able to try this out practically for myself, I also thought it looked more effective than a plain background because the image is clearly on show, the colour of the image also relates to the colours that would have been created from the light if it was used for real.