No More Lighting Effects?!

[Morazan]

Wow, right when I thought Adobe couldn't be any more moronic as an organization, you go and get rid of lighting effects?! Yeah, what graphic designer needs lighting effects in (what's supposed to be) the industry standard photo-editing and graphic-design program? I swear, if Adobe were an individual, it wouldn't be allowed to go outside without putting on its special helmet so it doesn't go boom.

So what now, Adobe? What about those of us who use your perenially defective software for a living to make photorealistic graphics? I mean, isn't it embarrassing to you that Affinity has lighting effects and Photoshop doesn't, or does nobody care? Did nobody think of a contingency plan before removing one of the program's major features? No need to answer the second question, I know the answer already, sadly.

[Stephen Marsh]

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/3d-faq.html#affected-3D-features

This has been discussed many times, but to save you searching all of those posts, here is an alternative:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/lighting-effects-not-working-in-photo...

[Morazan]

A very paltry substitute for something that should be (and indeed is) a very basic feature of any app created for working with raster graphics. I know how to do lighting effects from scratch with gradients, but that's not the point. This is just downright embarrassing: Adobe painted itself into a corner by tying a very basic feature to its woeful 3D engine which nobody asked for in the first place; and when, predictably, they ditched it because nobody was using it, they were caught flat-footed, so now they're trying to gaslight everyone. It's like when the Flanders didn't have enough money for Christmas presents so Ned says it's going to be an "imagination Christmas" (and Adobe expects its paying customers to say "Yaaaay!" like Rod and Todd). Pre-3D PS had lighting effects, Affinity has lighting effects, and even free, open-source GIMP has lighting effects (and quite robust ones, I might add). There is absolutely zero excuse for what Adobe has done, other than of course congenital and chronic incompetence.

[Conrad_C]

Did nobody think of a contingency plan before removing one of the program's major features? No need to answer the second question, I know the answer already, sadly.

By @Morazan

Do you actually know that is the answer? Because one existing contingency plan is in the Colin Smith video that’s in the second link that Stephen_A_Marsh posted: Because of the recent Photoshop upgrades to gradients, it is possible to use gradients to build lighting effects. I recognized what Colin was doing right away, because it’s how I’ve been doing fast non-destructive re-lighting of scenes at the raw stage in Lightroom Classic and Camera Raw, using the gradient masks in those Adobe apps. Especially with the radial gradients, as Colin demonstrates.

Colin literally starts the video by saying:

We recently lost a really powerful lighting tool in Photoshop, but now there's a brand new feature which can be adapted to get us exactly that same effect…

One thing that has changed since the video is that the new gradients were only in the Photoshop public beta then, but since then they have been merged into the main Photoshop build.

I’ll re-post the video here:

[Chuck Uebele]

What Colin is doing is cool, but it falls short of the lighting effects in that with lightig effects you can create a light that is more directional/cone shaped, like a flood with a reflector next to a wall. With the new masking tooks, you're kind of stuck with oval mask, unless you get into some complicated masking. In Colin's example, his image helped with make it look like a diretional flood in that the barrel on the left was already dark.

[Conrad_C]

I agree that the new gradients aren’t a full replacement for Lighting Effects. Obviously it would be more convenient to have a replacement feature with lighting-oriented controls. But the parent post was looking for a contingency plan, and the new gradients certainly are good enough to be a contingency plan.

The masking doesn’t have to be complicated. A cone can be done with a feathered vector mask for a radial gradient using the Black to Transparent gradient preset, and the cone can be drawn quickly with the Triangle tool. That’s just two components (radial gradient fill layer and vector mask) that can be built in seconds, with practice. In the Properties panel, adjust gradient settings and Mask Feather value to taste. See demo below.

Sure, it’s a few steps, but you really only have to build this once, because you can drag that vector-masked gradient fill layer into a Creative Cloud Library so that you can apply it to any other Photoshop document just by dragging it in from the library, then adjust as needed. And everything is adjustable: The vector triangle cone mask, the gradient position, the gradient colors, transition, mask feathering…

[Morazan]

You're 100% correct, this is absolutely no substitute. Of course I know how to make lighting effects from scratch with gradients, but that's not the point. Adobe ditched a major (and very basic) feature because it painted itself into a corner by tying its lighting effects to its god-awful 3D engine, which nobody used because it sucked donkey balls. And now they're gaslighting their paying customers by saying "Look, this is (almost) just as good!" Just another symptom of how dysfunctional and low-lifey a company they've become. PS had lighting effects before Adobe foisted the 3D engine on everyone, so even their excuses are completely paltry and not credible.

[Morazan]

Nah, sorry. That's Adobe trying to pacify paying users with shoddy goods. That's like getting rid of cruise control in the new model of a car then saying "But you can put a brick on the gas pedal, just as good, now pay up!" Lighting effects are a major feature of any raster-graphics app, and the fact that Adobe has ditched them is yet more evidence of what a joke of a company it's become.