Spotlight a Photo

This tutorial will teach you how to place a spotlight over a specific portion of a photograph. In addition this tutorial will also enable you to make your pictures more appealing by adding some extra depth using some Photoshop effects.

Start off by opening your image in Adobe Photoshop. You can view Figure1 as an illustration to the original image I will be using throughout this tutorial.

Figure 1

I sourced this image off the internet. I really loved the whole scene with the different colors and the people in both the foreground and background.

Click to enlarge

I have decided that I will be placing the accent on the two people standing in the foreground.

Move over to the 'Layers' panel. If the 'Layers' panel is not visible on your workspace, you can make it visible by going to 'Window > Layers' *or by pressing 'F7' as a keyboard shortcut. You will notice that there is one layer in the 'Layers' panel named 'Background'. To the right of this layer, you will notice a small lock icon, which indicates that this layer is locked and cannot be edited. To make this image editable, right-click on the 'Background' layer in the 'Layers' panel and select 'Duplicate Layer' *or press 'Ctrl' + 'J' as a keyboard shortcut. You may now delete the original, locked layer, which will leave you with one layer in the 'Layers' panel only.

You may now rename 'Layer1' in the 'Layers' panel as 'back_image'. You can do this by double-clicking directly on the caption or text of this layer and then typing the new name at the insertion point.

Actively select the 'Elliptical Marquee Tool' from the 'Toolbox'. View Figure2 below as an illustration to selecting the 'Elliptical Marquee Tool'. There are several tools in the same category, situated on the same button/icon, but by pressing and holding the button in the 'Toolbox', you will reveal the other options as well.

Figure 2

Once you have the 'Elliptical Marquee Tool' actively selected, you may now click once on the stage and drag to create a dashed circle. In order to create a perfectly round circle, you can hold 'Shift' while dragging with the 'Elliptical Marquee Tool'. I will be creating my dashed circle selection on the two people standing in the foreground. View Figure3 below as an illustration to this step.

Figure 3

With this selection still active as shown in Figure3 above, you will now press 'Ctrl' + 'C' to copy the selected area. Then you will need to create a new layer in the 'Layers' panel. To create a new layer, you can click on the 'New Layer' button at the bottom of the 'Layers' panel, *or you can press 'Ctrl' + 'Shift' + 'N'.

Once you have created the new layer, ensure that you have this new layer actively selected. Double-click directly on the caption or text of this layer, and rename this layer as 'zoom_image'. Now press 'Ctrl' + 'V' to paste the selected area which you have previously copied into the clipboard.

With the 'zoom_image' layer still actively selected in the 'Layers' panel, press 'M' to select the 'Marquee Tool'. With the 'Marquee Tool' selected right-click on the stage and select 'Free Transform'. You will now resize the 'zoom_image' layer. View Figure4 below as a reference and illustration.

Figure 4

Now double-click on the small preview thumbnail of the 'zoom_image' layer which is situated to the left of the text of the layer. This will open the 'Layer Styles' dialog. We will now apply a stroke effect around the content of the 'zoom_image' layer. View Figure5 below.

Figure 5

The RGB color which I used for the stroke is #515151. It is a lighter shade of black (#000000). View Figure6 as the result after creating the stroke effect.

Figure 6

Great, we are almost done. In this last step we will transform content of the 'back_image' from RGB color to normal black and white color. Now select the 'back_image' layer from the 'Layers' panel. Then press 'Ctrl' + 'Shift' + 'U' to change the content of this layer to black and white color. When you are done with this step, your photo should look something like Figure7 below.

Click to enlarge

Now doesn't this just look way better than a normal photo? Yes, it does. You can use this same thought to dust of and improve any of your other personal photos. It is always more interesting to see something like this.