In Photoshop, go to Select>Color Range>Choose the white areas, adjust slide accordingly.

Copy, paste, blur, copy paste, blur more, copy paste, blur more. Adjust opacity of each layer.


Most things in renderings are a combination of #1 having the 'eye' to 'see' things and #2 patience and lotsa careful work.

Thanks trace. I will try that out!

by the way, when you say copy paste you mean copy paste the whole layer right?

Thank youuu

ooo...nevermind.

i copypaste each layer i select with the color range. and create the effect by having multiple layers with varying opacity.

hire some interns for "course credit only"


or, see BB's 2nd paragraph for why not to do this in 2009.

quick and dirty trick:

copy the original rendering, blur the copy a lot like 30-50, then select 'color dodge' and lower the opacity. its really just photoshop, there is a way to render this but its too complicated and takes forever...

Podium and VUE are theo nly two render programs I've seen that have an impressive "God Light" and "Fog" feature.

Otherwise the other people are pretty much right.

A better way to fake it is to make a circular selection around the light source, feather it 10-30 pixels and then use a gradient fill (white to color temperature (slightly yellow) to transparent to fill the circle use the center to edge gradient fill.

Then you use pin light or soft light overlay.

Don't forget the lens flare. For the love of god don't forget the lens flare.

Didn't adobe finnaly axe the lens flare?

I remember the awful one illustrator 9 had.

nevermind, they just hid it.

Lens flare is like the Hair Metal of Photoshop filters.

i recommend a large diameter brush (300+ pixels) in soft light mode with 25% opacity. this is the more basic "freehand" way of doing it.

also, try a photo filter with a slightly yellow color, and run a large diameter eraser over the center at 25% opacity. it gives the light more warmth, if that's what you're going for.

the filter "diffuse glow" is what i always use for this effect. VERY easy and effective. I'm pretty sure it does exactly what your talking about. always save a jpeg to test it with though because once you do it and move on, theres no going back like you can with layers.

I also use the technique that "They've gone to plaid!" just described after i use diffuse glow. You have to use that second technique if you want to do the effect in ceterain areas

thank you very much all for the comments. they will be of much help when i try to re-render my old project.

ah, the lens flare. I lovingly used that recently, but don't' tell anyone.

;-)