How to create a dual light effect using Photoshop

• April 27th, 2023
• Photoshop

In this comprehensive Photoshop tutorial, we will carefully walk you through each step to create a stunning dual light effect that not only enhances portrait photos but can also be applied to any type of photography. This widely recognized photo effect has gained popularity, and we are thrilled to reveal the exact techniques you can use to recreate it. With our detailed instructions and guidance, you will be able to achieve remarkable results that will impress both yourself and others.

The photography used in the tutorial is a free photograph you can download from Unsplash.

Tutorial details

• Program: Photoshop
• Time estimation: Under 3 minutes
• Difficulty: Easy

Preview

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Creative Nerds. In this Photoshop tutorial, we’ll be sharing with you how you can create a dual-tone light effect in Photoshop in a matter of seconds. So, we wanna start off by creating a new adjustment layer, and turning our layer to black and white. We’re then gonna create a new layer. We’re gonna head over to our brushes, on our brush tool, and we’re gonna select the dropdown to select a soft rounded brush.

We want to ensure that the hardness is turned down to 0%. And what we can do, we can use the brackets on the cursor keys to increase size of the brush tip quickly. We’re then gonna select a color that we want to use as our first cutout within our dual effect. So, we’re gonna go with a nice dark purple, so that’s okay.

And we’re just gonna fill in half of the canvas. And then we’re gonna change the blend mode to B color. We’re then gonna create a new layer, and then we’re then gonna select another color. So, it could be any color of your choosing. So, we’re just gonna go with nice light blue, so that’s okay. And then we’re gonna repeat the effect, and try and fill in the other half of the canvas that we didn’t fill in last time with that light blue. And then we’re gonna change the blend mode to B color.

And there you go. Create a really cool dual-light effect using Photoshop. Photos that really work well with this effect is photos that are on a dark background. Or what you could potentially do is mask a photo, and then put it on a black background to really make the effects pop and stand out.

Hope this is a useful tutorial and one that you can use in your own design projects in the future. Thanks for watching, and stay tuned to Creative Nerd for further quick tips on how to use Photoshop.