How to Add a Warm Glow to Your Photos in Photoshop

On this video tutorial, Aaron Nace from Phlearn demonstrates how to add a warm glow look to your images using Photoshop.

 For this look, Nace recommend using a picture that is mostly backlit to ensure that the glow and coloring look as realistic as possible.a front-lit photo can work but it won’t look as realistic so keep this in mind.

Nace starts by creating a specific gradient and save it and begin with a black and white to start with adding it to the side of the image (like a light source coming from the side – in this case, the sun). The next step will be to create a gradient map which allows you to mix several colors (in this case we will add in yellow, orange and reds).

The final step – which is super simple but really cool is to use a blend layer between the original B&W gradient we made and the color gradient map with the orange, red and yellow colors that we made next. The last step – when everything comes together is where you need to right click on the gradient map and choose to create a clipping mask – and there you have it – super cool.

If you want a deeper look at gradient maps – check out this video on “How to Color Tone Using Gradient Maps” also by Nace.

You can find many more Photoshop video tutorials on LensVid’s Photoshop section (and you can find a lot more Phlearn videos on our special Phlearn subsection).

Iddo Genuth
Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.

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