The Lights effect, (found under
Effects > Illumination > Lights...)
comes with 24 presets, or you can create your own
custom effect. It's easiest to start with a preset, and then edit
it to your own tastes.
There are five lights. Each can be selected individually by either
clicking on the light dot in the left preview pane or by clicking
on the light buttons at the bottom of the preset pane. In addition,
each light can be adjusted individually for lightness/darkness, on/off,
color, intensity, direction, smoothness, light position, cone size,
and asymmetry. That's a bit of a mouthful, so let's take a look
at this.
Learning to operate a digital camera isn't always the easiest thing,
so if you've got one (and even if you don't), you probably have some
terribly under-exposed images that you wish you could salvage.
There are other ways of lightening an under exposed photo, through
layers and blend modes, but they don't quite add the soft touch
and atmosphere of the lights effect.
The examples to the right were created by starting with the
Effects > Illumination > Lights
Pre-set: Floodlight. The Darkness was set to 81, and the Color
to pale yellow on all three. The top image is the original.
light 5:
Intensity: 90
direction: 200
Horizontal: 0
Vertical: 0
Smoothness: 80
Scale: 10
Cone Size: 40
Asymmetry: 1
Light 3:
Intensity: 40
Direction: 307
Horizontal: 96
Vertical: 95
Smoothness: 28
Scale: 10
Cone Size: 45
Asymmetry: 327
Light 2:
Intensity: 40
Direction: 245
Horizontal: 107
Vertical: -100
Smoothness: 28
Scale: 10
Cone Size: 45
Asymmetry: 500
Light 5:
Intensity: 90
direction: 200
Horizontal: 0
Vertical: 0
Smoothness: 80
Scale: 10
Cone Size: 40
Asymmetry: 1
Only lights 3 and 5 and lights 2 and 5 were used respectively on
the second and third image. All other lights were "turned off". For the
bottom image, lights 2, 3, and 5 were on, 1 and 4 off.
This bottom image is for those of you who might see these
images as still too dark, here's a sample set with the darkness setting
lowered and the intensity increased. My personal preference is the
softer light, but given the different operating systems, plus
personal settings, I realize the above examples may not come
across the web as they appear to me.
Now let's look at the individual settings, and see if we can't get
a handle on this thing.
