Welcome to Oz: A Cinematic Approach to Digital Still Photography with Photoshop

Light Changes Ahead

Up to this point, the modifications to the image have been profound, but subtle. From here on, they will be more dramatic. By removing such issues as color cast and the lack of depth of field, which would otherwise be problems throughout the image editing process, you have created an image with which you can more easily work. In other words, you’ve been working from global to granular.

Now it’s time to start building the “lighting” of this image. Remember, you are in service of reality, and the changes you make to an image must be transparent to the viewer. This means paying attention to the way light manifests itself in the real world. Light has a direction, and so do any shadows it casts. Fail to respect that physical law, ...