Video Game Cover Light Effect in Photoshop

A few months ago I was checking some video-game sites, as I’m sort of addicted to video-games, and I saw this image with a really cool light effect. It was from a game called Allan Wake and the whole game had this focus on light effects as the guy was always holding a flashlight. I loved how dramatic that effect was and actually the advertising campaign for this game was all about exploring light effects and shadows, simply fantastic.

So I decided to try that in Photoshop. In this tutorial I will show you how to create a super cool dramatic light effect using simple filters and blend modes, but with an awesome outcome. This tutorial will take you about 45 minutes to 1 hour to go through, but I’m confident that it will be worth your time. I used Adobe Photoshop CS5 to create this work.