3D lights in Photoshop CS4

There are three different 3D lights in Photoshop CS4: Point Light, Spot Light and Infinite Light.

The spot light is a cone shape lighting system. The point light is something similar as a light bulb, because it emits light in all direction from a single point. Point light is a great way to fill in your 3D scene with light. Infinite lights shine from one directional plane, like sunlight.

This is how you create 3D lights in your 3D scene:

1. Click on the 3D layer and click on the Filter by: Lights icon. At the bottom, there is a “Create a new light” icon.

2. With your light selected, go to the Tool Bar at the left where the lighting tools are located. Click on “Rotate the light” this allows you to move or rotate your lights.

Light Guide

Most often it’s hard to tell which light is pointing where and what type of lights are in the 3D scene. This is when you want to use Light Guide to display all your lightings.

To turn the Light Guide, go to the 3D panel, click on the Filter by: Lights button and at the bottom click on Light Guide.

When the Light Guide is enable, you will be able view all of your lights on your 3D scene. The Spot Light will look like a cone, the Point Light is a round ball and the Infinite Light is a straight line.

Use the Rotate Light tool to rotate and move the lights on your 3D scene. Enabling Light Guides help you to see what you are doing with lights.

Lighting options

There are a few options that are unique to only to spot lights. Click on the Filter by: Lights and select one of the spot light.

There are the Hotspot and Falloff options for Spot Lights. Next to it is the visual diagram of the Spot Light and the hotspot/falloff.

The Hotspot basically has the inner core light from the Spot Light with the Falloff being the outer ring of the Spot Light. Using Hotspot and Falloff help you create how Spot Lights illuminate your scene and the 3D object. The Hot Spot and Falloff options only work with Spot Light and not with Infinite or Point Lights.

Under the Hotspot and Falloff options is the “Use Attenuation” this controls the lights fading in and fading out. The “Use Attenuation” is available for all three types of lightings. Most often you will need to use the “Outer” more than “Inner” because Outer controls how the light will fade out.

You can change Spot Light to Infinite Light or Point Light by using the drop down menu. This mean you don’t have to delete your lights or add the new lights and repositioning it. You can use this option to change to any of the three lights.

Saving Lights

Creating good lightings can become a very time consuming task because there are so many different settings for lightings. Also, lighting your 3D scene is one of the most important things you can do to bring your 3D object to life. When you have all of your lightings set up, you can save it for later use.

With Photoshop CS4 you can now set up your lightings the way you wanted and have the ability to save it. You can reuse the same lights on different 3D scenes as many as you like.

This is how you save your lights:

1. Select your 3D layer.
2. Save Lights Present…
3. This will save your light setup as .P3L file format and that’s it!
4. To load the lightings, go to Add Lights… and look for the .P3L file.

There are also many preset lightings built-in Photoshop CS4. Just click on Add Lights… and there should be Blue Lights.p3l, CAD Optimized.p3l, Cube Lights.p3l, Day Lights.p3l, Hard Lights.p3l, Night Lights.p3l, Primary Colors.p3l, Red Lights.p3l, and White Lights.p3l

As you can see, you can save tons of time with the Save Lights Present…

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