Video Tutorials
Stop Faking Glow Effects: Here's How to Build a Real Cinematic Light Bloom in Photoshop
There’s a specific flavor of photo edit that I used to spend embarrassing amounts of time chasing. You’ve seen it. That soft, warm, almost-overexposed bloom around highlights that makes a photo look like it was shot on film that’s slightly too happy about itself. I kept trying to fake it by cranking up a Gaussian blur on a duplicated layer and hoping for the best. The result was always the same: muddy, flat, and sad.