Lighting effect

[sloppy]

I've done a bg for a city block.
http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/City_Block.png

What I'm hoping I could get help with is what's the best way to make it look like light is coming from the street lamp and shining onto the ground.Ã,  In the picture I've tried the dodge tool in Photoshop but I don't really like it.Ã,  I figured that doing a gradient on another layer and putting the two layers together would be right, but I don't know how to do that.Ã, 

Does anyone know how to do a glow effect around a light source like this?

[Babar]

Here you go. Just an idea. You could give the lights an orange tinge, but you'd then have to fix up the shading on everything else to give that an orange tinge as well.

I'd also lose the double black outlines, but that might be your style.

[sloppy]

That looks pretty good (and I'd like to know how that was done), but I was hoping for a more yellowish, warmer look to it.Ã,  Sort of like this example:



In the tutorial that this comes from, it said a gradient was done on another layer and then the layers blended together or something like that.Ã,  But whatever I try, I can't get any effect like this.

[Ashen]

I've used that tutorial! I get fairly good results - not as good as shown, but better that I managed previously.

I use PSP, so I couldn't tell you the exact settings to use, but I think the secret is to play around with them until you're happy. The settings/instructions in the tutorial are only guides to begin with, and most likely refer to an older version of the program that you've got.

EDIT: I think Babar's edit is done with a second layer, with the opacity turned down slightly.

[MrColossal]

I think the problem is that you're adding light to a fully lit scene.

The only reason this scene is night time is because the sky is night. Nothing else gives me that feeling, if you swapped out the stars for a nice mid afternoon sunny day it would work fine. So what you're trying to do is add MORE light to a scene that is already full of light.

What you should be doing is paying attention to the darkenss and not the light, the best way to make something appear bright and lit up [like the area around the street lamp] is to make everything around it dark. Light doesn't show up without dark and shadow.

In that image from my tutorial the scene is definetly night time, know what I mean?

[Revan]

First of all you need to make the whoe pic darker like MrColosell says,Turn up the blue in the pic as well... then you need to get a brush with about 30% opacticy yellow and colour the lights... also I've added a fog effect.... (same as lights only 20% opacticty and white)

quick paintover....

[sloppy]

What you should be doing is paying attention to the darkenss and not the light, the best way to make something appear bright and lit up [like the area around the street lamp] is to make everything around it dark. Light doesn't show up without dark and shadow.

In that image from my tutorial the scene is definetly night time, know what I mean?

Okay, I understand what you're saying.Ã,  Let me get busy on that.
Revan: Nice job, it shows me what I'm shooting for with the lighting and darkness contrast.

[sloppy]

So how does this look:


I made the bg darker and used the brush tool with lower opacity.

[Evil]

Well, I think you should adjust the street first.



Red is for a street perpendicular to the other and the blue is for one coming in at an angle.

[Khris]

About the perspective:
You should absolutely increase the distance between the two vanishing points. Of course that means you'd have to redraw the whole bg, but it would look much more convincing.
As a rule of thumb, a 90°-angle like the one in the bottom right (although obscured by the black border) mustn't be displayed with less than 90°.
(That's not my rule, I've read it in one of Loomis' books. Look around in your room and check the angle at the nearest corner of anything thats rectangle-shaped, if you don't believe me )

The hydrant's not three-dimensional. And it's unlikely for a street to run straight to the horizon.
The shading of the moon is slightly wrong, too, as both of its poles are illuminated. And its dark side shouldn't be visible either.

[Andail]

Khrismuc is correct, which is very satisfying to a perspective-whore like myself.

I don't know exactly what Evil was trying to show though. The original picture is correct as far as the system it uses goes; the problem is that it's not using a very good system.

As Khrismuc pointed out, draw the viewpoints further apart, and make sure not to draw any angles less than 90 degrees. This is achieved by drawing (or imagining) a circle whose width is determined by both the viewpoints. Nothing outside this circle should be drawn towards any of the viewpoints.