Metal & Organic Lighting Techniques Tutorial Author - Ramseus (http://www.dflstudios.90megs.com)

In this tutorial I'm going to show you step-by-step how to create a nice fancy lighting/coloring effect.  With this technique you won't need to ever change the color balance on a render to make it blend well with your background.

Ok, first things first - Pick out a render.  I've chosen two renders because there are two kinds of lighting/coloring that I'm going to cover, metallic and organic.  Both are relatively similar, yet different enough to require explaining separately.


Metallic Lighting

Step 1: After you have chosen your render, create a new file.  I prefer 360x110 pixels in size. Create your background and position your render.

Step 2: Reset your brushes to default and select an airbrush. I suggest a 17px airbrush. Create a new layer above the render and brush around the lighter areas, as shown in green below:

Step 3: This is your base.  Now make sure the brushing is white by going into color balance and bringing brightness up to +100.  Change the blending mode to soft light.

Step 4: Now on a new layer, you'll need to airbrush in the same area, but only on the brightest spots, as shown in orange:

Step 5: Once again, make sure the brushing is white, or bring brightness up to +100.  Here you'll have to make a design choice.  You can either change the blending mode to overlay, or you can just lower the opacity of the layer, whichever looks better in the situation.  Here I lowered opacity.

Step 6: Now add some highlights. Be aware that whenever you add a different light color, or you want a different brightness you must do it on a new layer. Airbrush edges and smaller areas and such.  Once again you'll have to choose between overlay, or lowering the opacity, or both. At this point you may have to make your brush smaller.

Step 7: I added some highlights around some areas.  I also brought in some darker brushing to give the render more depth.  Do the same in the way of blending for the darker colors.  In addition to just black and white airbrushing I added some colored airbrushing to give it a different look. If you want, you can completely change the color of the render, thusly eliminating the need to mess around with color balances.   You can also change the blending mode of the render - whatever you want really.  Go crazy, its your choice.

Organic Lighting

Step 1: Position your render accordingly.

Step 2: Get ouy your airbrush again.  Like before, every color or brightness of lighting must go on a separate layer.   Once again I used a 17px airbrush.  You will notice on the render 3 main areas: normal lighted, shadowed, and highlighted.  Start by airbrushing the normal lighted skin tones, like so:

Step 3: Make the airbrushing white (+100 brightness if necessary). Now right click the layer with the airbrushing on it and click on blending options.  Change the blending mode to darken (yes, the airbrushing IS supposed to disappear).  Go into color overlay. Change the color overlay's blending to hard light.   Now choose a color. I chose a medium-light blue. You may have to lower the opacity of the color overlay, if so do it where you feel it looks best.

Step 4: Now, on a new layer of course, airbrush the next skin tone.  In most cases this will mean the highlighted skin tones:

Step 5: Again, make sure the brushing is white, change the blending to darken.  Create a color overlay, change it to hard light, and choose your color, then play with the opacity.  I chose a color that was nearly the same, but you don't have to if you don't want.

Step 6: Now we move onto the shadows:

Step 7: Do the same as before - white brushing, blending = darken.  Color overlay = hard light, choose color/opacity.

Now what we have is a nicely colored render. At this point you can change the blending of the render itself, or whatever you want.  If you choose to add more lighting, then I suggest this: I brushed around the outside to give my render a healthy glow, by changing the blending mode of the brushing to overlay. I made the eyes and teeth brighter and somewhat glowing by again using overlay mode.  On his wrist band you should use metallic brushing techniques, I used overlay and soft light for blending on it. Once again, you now have a well blended render.  You can go further than this, and you can also do whatever you want to the render itself now. It's all up to you.  You can make the lighting hard and glowing, or soft and just coloring - your choice! I hope this tutorial has helped you out!