The Photoshop Guru's Handbook - "Creating the NUI"
Part 2 - Nutz & Bolts (Creating the "Reflections" Light style)

This Light style is easy to create. Just follow the steps below and use this screenshot to make the needed adjustments.

First of all, don't pay attention to the way the effect looks in this screenshot. The real detail was lost when the image got compressed as a gif, using the Web Safe palette.
To create the effect of 'reflections' (as from an outdoor environment - sky, sun, earth, etc.), i've used 5 lights. Four are Omni lights and one is a Spotlight. There are only 2 colours used for this Light style, a pale blue & a pale yellow (both of which are 'web safe' palette colours).
Below the screenshot are the settings for each light used.

Reflections Light style screenshot
If you're unfamiliar with this filter, you'll notice that the Properties and Texture Channel settings will remain constant with each light. They are only setup once, so set them to match what you see here. At the top of the window you see the 'Light Style' menu, and a couple of settings sliders. The Omni lights only use the Intensity slider, the Spotlight uses both sliders.
Here are the Intensity settings for each Omni light - starting from the bottom left and going clockwise:
    Omni Light settings
  • Bottom left: Intensity = 23 - Pale Blue colour
  • Top left: Intensity = 35 - Pale Yellow colour
  • Top right: Intensity = 10 - Pale Yellow colour
  • Bottom right: Intensity = 28 - Pale Blue colour
And now here's the setting for the Spotlight, even though you can see it in the picture above:
    Spot Light settings
  • Intensity = 10 - Pale Blue colour
  • Focus = 100 (Wide)
And that's all there is to it. Once the settings have been made just save the Style as 'Reflections', or whatever you want to name it; it's yours now :?)


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