Sunshine Lomo Effect

It's been forever since I posted, so I've decided to change it up a little before updating again.

Instead of frequently uploading papers and elements, I'm going to stick to occasionally (every month or so?) giving out overlays, textures, or brushes for download.

I am going to try to post a tutorial every week. It could be short, long, or in between. It could be about digi scrapping, photo editing, or graphic making. This particular one is on how to achieve a 'sunshine lomo effect'.


In this little tip we'll make the transition from this

to this

1. Open up your photo in Photoshop Elements. This technique works best with outdoor sunny shots.
2. Duplicate your background layer and hide the background layer (because you don't want to make any changes on the original).
3. Duplicate this layer again.
4. Go to Filter - Render - Lighting Effects.
5. Adjust your settings so it is similar to mine.

6. On the left hand side click the point where you want most of the light to be focused. In this particular photo, I'm focusing the light where the boat is.
7. Click OK.
8. Now you will notice that most of the photo darkens with only the part you selected (in my case the boat) lighted up. Use a large soft eraser to erase the dark parts. Do not erase the bright spot.
9. Right click on the light spot layer in your layers palette/panel and select 'Merge Down'. Now you will have one layer with both the photo and light spot.
10. Duplicate this photo/light spot layer and go to Enhance - Convert to Black and White
11. Select 'Infrared Effect'. Then click OK.
12. Set the blend mode of the B/W layer to Luminosity.
13. Go to Layer - New Adjustment Layer - Hue/Saturation.
14. Lower the Saturation to -30.
15. Click OK. Then go to Layer - New Adjustment Layer - Levels. Click the drop down menu at the top that says RGB to switch to different channels. We will be altering the settings of all the Red, Green, and Blue channels individually. Alter your settings to match the screenshot below.

16. Right click on any layer and select 'Merge Visible'. This will merge together all the layers except the original Bakground layer.

17. Go to Filter - Correct Camera Distortion. Under the Vignette options move the slider significantly to the right for a bright vignette.

18. You are done. :)

For this particular photo I decided I wasn't that satisfied with the final result. It was too lomo, and less sunshine for me. Plus I wanted to add some pink hues to bring back that 'rising sun' color from the original.

So, during step #5 I positioned the light near the horizon and click OK.

Then I reapplied the lighting effects filter, this time at the boat with the Intensity-Full slider more to the right. I toned down the space in between using a soft eraser set as low opacity.

After I had completed all the steps, I went to Enhance - Adjust Color - Color Variations. I selected 'Highlights' as the area I wanted to adjust, left the color intensity slider as is, and clicked on the 'Decrease Green' button once.

You can see how the final turned out below: