Multi-light images with one strobe
I’ve had a few people asking about how I lit this Civic with only one strobe, and it’s a really simple process for anyone familiar with Photoshop, and off-camera flash.
I used one Sunpak PZ40X flash, a Nikon D40 w/ 18-55mm lens, and Photoshop CS3. I shot all images in RAW, using a tripod. Here’s me very quick, and rather cruderecently updated tutorial. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments.
First, you need to gather your images. Make sure to use a steady tripod, and shoot in either aperture priority or manual mode. For this shoot, I was in Aperture Priority. In retrospect, Manual would have been better so that I could have maintained a consistent ratio of ambient to flash light, but oh well. Live and learn, I s’pose. The reason for shooting in Aperture Priority or Manual Mode is to maintain a consistent depth of field.
Now open up all of your images in your RAW converter, adjust white balance/exposure/etc to your liking for each image. I suggest using the same white balance across all images. Also, it is very important to process each image in a similar fashion so that you have the same look and feel in each image.
Once you have your images color-corrected, white balanced, or whatever else you like to do, open them in Photoshop.
If any of your images are rotated the wrong way, like a few of mine were, rotate them now. Not sure why they opened sideways, since the camera never moved…
Once all of your images are open in Photoshop, drag them all to one image. It doesn’t matter which. Just get them all on one canvas.
Select your bottom layer, then shift-click the top layer. This will select all layers in your document.
Select the “Move” Tool, and click Align Horizontal Centers.
Next, click Align Vertical Centers. This gets all of your images aligned with eachother.
Now lock all of them together. Now they’ll move with each other, and stay lined up.
Now, for organizational purposes, I like to rename my layers. I name them according to what portion of the scene is lit. Since this is a car, I refer to which area of the car is lit, obviously.
Hide all layers except the bottom two. On this particular layer, I chose to Invert the Layer Mask, which converts it to a Hide All Mask. I then painted in what I wanted to be lit.
Ok… Now for the fun stuff. Add a layer mask to each layer.
Select the “Brush” Tool and select a round brush. Drop the Hardness to 0 (zero) and bump the Diameter to a nice, large number. I think I used like a 500 px brush. This will be used for broad masking. “Hardness” refers to the brushes edges.
Using the large brush, paint in all of your broad light. Adjust brush size and hardness as necessary to paint smaller, tighter areas.
When coming to areas of high contrast, like the front right bumper corner, I use varying levels of gray to blend them together.
If you alt-click the layer masks thumbnail, you can see what you’ve actually painted. Here’s my front bumper being blended.
Once you have all of the masking done, press CTRL + ALT + E to Stamp Visible Layers.
I finish it off with some levels and curves, then do whatever other post-processing necessary.
Like I said, this was a very crude, quick, tutorial. If you need help, let me know. I skipped a lot of the time consuming things, because frankly, I felt that they’ve been covered so widely elsewhere. A tablet would make this process rather quick and easy, but I use a mouse and it is still pretty simple.
What’s everyone think? Feel free to share your images.