How to create lighting effects in Photoshop

First, get a stock photo of a high jumper going over a bar. You’ll need to cut her out. I find Illustrator’s Pen tool (P) is much better than Photoshop for cutting out photos, so use this if you have it. 

Use the Pen tool to put a path around her. Only roughly round the hair in a block for now. We will refine that in Photoshop.

If you don’t have Illustrator, just cut her out in Photoshop as normal and skip to Step 3.

Copy and paste the athlete into Photoshop. Cmd/Ctrl + click on the photo layer to create a marquee selection around her. With the Quick Selection tool (W), Alt + click to refine the selection around the hair. 

With the marquee selection still around the athlete, create a layer mask. Select the mask in your layers and press Cmd/Ctrl + Alt + R to bring up the Refine Mask menu. Adjust each of the settings until you’re happy. 

Select a white brush and use your layer mask to remove some of the soft edges around the athlete. Don’t pull it in too tight though, otherwise it will be obvious that your photo has been cropped. 

Next, use the Clone Stamp (S) to remove the bar and its shadow on the athlete’s hips and legs.

Open the Adjustments panel and add a Gradient Map adjustment layer to apply a black-and-white gradient map. Press Cmd/Ctrl + Alt + G to apply a clipping mask to it based on the photo below it in the layer stack. 

Before you start adding details, it’s very important to determine the mood of the piece. Once you’ve established this, all the other elements will only help accentuate what’s already there. 

To do this, first create a Gradient fill layer above the background, using a Radial gradient as shown. Next, add a Levels adjustment layer with a clipping mask to the athlete layer, to accentuate the shadows on her.

Now that you’ve established some atmosphere, it’s time to add some colour. Double-click on the Gradient icon on the Gradient Fill layer, and click on the Gradient Editor. Use the sliders to add some different hues. 

Add some Gradient Map adjustment layers and Solid Color fill layers to the photo to create some complementary hues, using a blending mode of Color so only the athlete’s hue is adjusted.

Create some thin, angled gradients using thin and largely transparent Gradient fill layers like those shown here. This should create a kind of beam that zooms into infinity. If necessary, use a layer mask with a black brush to mask some parts of the photo.

It’s now time to indicate some movement, so add some Radial Gradients and mask the superfluous parts.

Add some glows, sparkles and other details around the athlete. First, draw round the outline of your high jumper – including the outlines of her limbs, clothes and clothing detail – with a thin white brush. Then rough out some sparkles. Next, apply an Outer Glow layer style from the bottom of the Layers panel. 

Next, go into Illustrator and create a series of radial lines (if you don’t have Illustrator, go to Step 12 and use radiallines.ai from the project files).

To do this, use the Line tool (/) to create a cross. Select both lines, right-click and go to Transform > Rotate. Set your angle to 45° and click Copy. Repeat this step and rotate by 22.5°, 11.25°, 6.25°, and so on. Make sure you reselect your original lines each time you rotate. 

Copy and paste the radial lines and place them to your liking (or import radiallines.ai). Add a layer mask, then Outer Glow and Color Overlay layer styles to create shimmery pink lines. Remove parts of the lines with a black brush on the layer mask. Repeat this using different a yellow Color Overlay style to enhance the effect.

Now we are going to add a simple star field. Select a hard brush and create some dots on your canvas in a new layer. Once you have a decent amount start duplicating, scaling, rotating and applying different levels of opacity to cover most of the canvas in a way that’s visually interesting.

With your brush tool, create some more details to accentuate movement and atmosphere. Use Adjustment Layers such as Color Balance to tweak your hues.

Save your creation as a Jpg. Open the file and Apply some light noise. This makes the project feel a little less ‘digital’ by giving the whole image some extra texture.