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Ah! Good find, thanks!  Always room for improvement it seems

Ok I went about as far on this picture I think I'll go for now, thanks everyone for the help!  I'm amazed at how much information you guys were able to teach me.

Anyway, here's the finished copy of it, in case some of you were curious.  It's obviously not perfect, but it has come a long way:


Thanks again!

Hey guys,

So I figured out a way around the brush issue, I just Polygon select the area I want then use a rather large brush to get the desired, gradual lighting effect. 

Here's my next try:


The lighting is much more fluid and realistic.  However, I'm finding it rather difficult to create darkness with the purple hue.  When I add an adjustment layer and fiddle with the hue, it just doesn't seem as a authentic and seems like it's be cut and paste on top of the image.

Any pointers for hue adjustments?

Thanks for the help!

It's the most recent version of Photoshop and illustrator, CS6.  I might just have a weird brush selected.

Thanks everyone for the pointers (thanks Anian for the info on contrasting and complimentary colors, will definitely be helpful when creating backdrops in the future), I spent most of the day trying to figure out how to recreate the image you created ThreeOhFour. 

I trashed probably a dozen attempts, here's the best I came up with:

(Ignore the shading in the back right corner, definitely messed that up)

I'm having a hard time drawing the lighting/shading without creating obvious "brush" marks.  Lighting doesn't seem to flow or mesh as well as in yours.  I'm not able to create subtle lighting on the walls and floors.

Lastly, Did you add hue by adding a Layer w/ a mask and just select the areas that were meant to be dark?

Thanks everybody for the help, much appreciated.

Awesome, thanks for the replies guys! Very helpful.

ThreeOhFour, when you talk about color wheels and complimentary colors, do you mean, add a hue that is opposite of the main light source?  In that photo of DIG it seems the primary colors used were Orange and Blue (which are opposite), and I think you used purple as a hue in the lighting you did for my picture?

Again, thanks guys.  I'll post back with results if I'm able to put this into practice.

Hey thanks for the reply.  I actually did check that out and read several of the guides you posted along with the users you linked as well.  But I'll take a closer look at what everyone has said.  Is there a program other than Photopshop to use?  I saw you guys talking about Kerkythea, but from what I understand that's more for 3D lighting?

Regardless, I'll go through that thread and see what I can find, Thanks!

Hello everybody!

I'm working on some backgrounds and I'm having a hard time getting the lighting correct.

Here's an example of one of the backgrounds I've created and the lighting I've tried.

The unlighted background:


My attempt at lighting:


I created the unlighted background in Illustrator, then attempted to light it up with Photoshop.  The lighting that I used does serve its purpose, somewhat, in that it adds depth and realism to the picture.  However, I'm not so good with color shading and such so it looks more like lighted smoke or mist that actual color.  I'm having a hard time creating realistic lighting without creating a colored fog so to speak.

Does anyone have any pointers?  I've read several guides and forum posts and the consensus seems to be that Photoshop/Illustrator are not the best programs to use for these types of adventure games.  Is there one in particular that serves this purpose better?  I'm keen on learning, but if there's a program that is worth my time more than another than that would obviously be preferred.

Any criticism and/or feedback is welcome!

Thanks!