Rangefinder Magazine
April 2005

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Photoshop CS by Scott Kelby and Felix Nelson
Product Shot Spotlight Effects

This is one of those techniques that you pull out of the hat when you need a quick, dramatic effect to show off a boring product shot. The great thing about this down-and-dirty trick is that it’s not much harder than drawing an oval-shaped selection, but when your client sees it, they’ll think you worked all night.

STEP ONE: Open a new document in RGB mode with a resolution of 72ppi. (Note: We’ll include high-res settings as we go if you want to work at 300ppi.) Press the letter “d” to set your Foreground color to black, then fill the Background layer with black by pressing Option-Delete (PC: Alt-Backspace). Click on the “Create a New Layer” icon at the bottom of the Layers palette to add a new blank layer, and then use the Elliptical Marquee tool to make an oval-shaped selection like the one shown here.

STEP TWO: To create the illusion of a spotlight, you’ll need to soften the edges of the selection, so go under the Select menu and choose Feather. In the Feather Selection dialog, enter a Feather Radius of 25 pixels and click OK (for high-res, 300ppi images, enter a Feather Radius of 70 pixels).

STEP THREE: Click on the Foreground Color Swatch and set your Foreground color to a brownish-red color in the Color Picker. Fill your soft-edged selection with this brownish-red color by pressing Opt-Del (Alt-Backspace). Next, go under the Select menu, under Modify, and choose Contract. Enter 50 pixels, and click OK to shrink your selection inward by 50 pixels. (For high-res images, you need to contract the selection by 200 pixels, but the maximum amount you can enter in the Contract Selection dialog is 100 pixels, so you’ll have to contract by 100 pixels, and then contract again by another 100 pixels.) Do not deselect yet.

STEP FOUR: When you click OK, you’ll see the contracted selection (as shown here). Set your Foreground color to a bright yellow. (We used the build Red 252, Green 212, Blue 2.)

STEP FIVE: Press Opt-Del (Alt-Backspace) to fill your contracted selection with your new yellow Foreground color. You can deselect by pressing Cmd-D (Ctrl-D). Now, press Cmd-minus (Ctrl-minus) twice to zoom your document window out to a smaller size. Then, grab the bottom right-hand corner of your document window and drag it out until the gray canvas area surrounding your image is visible (as shown). Then press Cmd-T (Ctrl-T) to bring up the Free Transform bounding box around your oval.

STEP SIX: Move your cursor above the Free Transform bounding box, and click-and-drag to the right to rotate your oval (as shown). After you rotate the oval, click on the top and bottom center anchor points and drag them outward to make the oval larger. Lastly, click on the bottom-right corner point and drag down to stretch the oval to the bottom-right corner of the image area (as shown).

STEP SEVEN: Press Return (Enter) to lock in your transformation, giving you the soft spotlight background you see here. The background portion is done; now it’s time to add a product shot.

STEP EIGHT : Open the product shot you want to use. (The stock photo of the statuette shown here is from Brand X Pictures, www.brandx.com/. If you’re a NAPP member, you can download this photo from the NAPP member Web site.) You’ll need to put a selection around your photo so you can drag it onto your spotlight background. Because this product shot was taken on a white background, putting a selection around it is easy—just click the Magic Wand tool (W) on the white background area. Then hold the Shift key and click on the white area inside each arm to add those areas to your selection. Then, go under the Select menu and choose Inverse, which selects the statuette (the opposite of the background). Switch to the Move tool, and drag the statuette over into your spotlight background document and position it on the right side of the spotlight.

STEP NINE: Once you’ve dragged the statuette onto your spotlight background, press Cmd-J (Ctrl-J) to duplicate your statuette layer. Press “d” to set your Foreground color to black, then press Shift-Opt-Del (Shift-Alt-Backspace) to fill this duplicate statuette with black. Now, duplicate this black-filled statuette layer by pressing Cmd-J (Ctrl-J). Go to the Layers palette and drag both of these layers below the full color statuette layer (as shown here in the Layers palette). Click on the top black-filled statuette layer.

STEP TEN: You’re going to turn this black statuette layer into a drop shadow. Go under the Filter menu, under Blur, and choose Gaussian blur. When the dialog box appears, enter 5 and click OK to soften the black statuette on this layer (for high-res images use 18 pixels). Switch to the Move tool, then press the Down Arrow key on your keyboard a few times until you can see the bottom of the shadow below your color statuette (you can see the shadow in the capture shown here). The problem is you’ll see the shadow peeking out from behind the entire statuette, but you only want it visible below the base. So switch to the Eraser tool, get a huge, soft-edged brush (like the one shown here), and erase all the areas of this shadow layer except for the areas below the base. Remember, although you’re seeing the full color layer, you’re erasing on the black-filled shadow layer. Continue erasing until just the shadow beneath the base remains.

STEP ELEVEN: Go to the Layers palette and click on the other black statuette layer. (You’re going to use this layer to create a cast shadow, as if there were multiple light sources.) Press Cmd-T (Ctrl-T) to bring up Free Transform. Then, hold the Command key (Control key), click on the top center control point, and drag down and to the left to skew the shadow until it’s almost flat. When it looks like the one shown here, press Return (Enter) to lock in your transformation. Now, set your Foreground color back to the same brownish-red color you used at the beginning of this technique. Fill your black statuette layer with this color by pressing Shift-Opt-Del (Shift-Alt-Backspace).

Lastly, to soften your shadow, go under the Filter menu, under Blur, and choose Gaussian Blur. Apply another 5-pixel blur (for high-res photos, try 18 pixels), and click OK. You can see this soft, reddish brown cast shadow in the capture in Step Twelve.

STEP TWELVE: You (okay, we) have another problem. The light source on the statuette is on its left side, but the spotlight is coming from the opposite side (not to mention the cast shadow), but don’t worry, we have a plan. You’re going to flip (that’s right, flip) the statuette so the light falls on the right side, rather than the left. Click on the color statuette layer in the Layers palette to make it active. Press Cmd-T (Ctrl-T) to bring up Free Transform, then Ctrl-click (Right-click) within the Free Transform bounding box to bring up a pop-up list of transformations. Choose Flip Horizontal from this list to flip your statuette to the other side, then press Return (Enter) to lock in the transformation. Luckily, the cast shadow still works because the shape of the statuette is the same on both sides; but if you’re using a different product, you might have to flip the shadow horizontally as well.

STEP THIRTEEN: Here’s the final image, with some text added. The type is set in the font Trajan (from Adobe), and between each row of type, we added a 1-pixel line using the Line tool.

Scott Kelby is the president of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) and a best-selling author.

Felix Nelson is the creative director of Photoshop User magazine and NAPP and is the art director for Mac Design magazine. He is also a co-author of several Photoshop books and a Photoshop instructor.