Can I upload layered PSD files into Substance?

[Katie24680392xo8x]

Hi! I've used the Render: Lighting Effects Filter in Photoshop for years, and now that it's unavailable I don't know what to do. I need this feature to insert wallpaper patterns into photographs, and adjust lighting and shadow.

I'm having trouble figuring out if Substance Stager is what I now need. Can I layer my photos in Photoshop, then import them into Stager and adjust shadows and lighitng in certain layers? Help!

[JMathews]

Hi @Katie24680392xo8x ! 

I think the easiest replacement may be the upcoming Substance integration in Photoshop.  It allows you to use Substance materials with lighting effects directly in Photoshop.  It's still in Beta right now, but if you're part of the Photoshop Beta group you'll have access, or coming soon.

https://twitter.com/Substance3D/status/1525155245768200195?s=20&t=2S8PoJVMqpIbTIx_CtTYgw

One thing though is that it uses "materials" not images.  So you may need to convert your wall papers into materials. You can do that either with Adobe Capture or Substance 3D Sampler.  I'm not the expert on either of those flows, but each app team/forum might be able to help with more details!

--

You could potentially do this in Stager but I'm not sure it will be a great experience honestly...  I've mocked up a basic example of what that workflow might look like if I understand your use case.  Please excuse the poor results, I just did it super fast to illustrate the basics.

Step 1: Load your background photo into Stager.  Just drag-n-drop it into the canvas and it will create a 3D camera with the image assigned

2 - Add a plane object. 

3: Resize/rotate the plane to match the wall.  Without going into too much detail, you basicallly use the transform tool to move, rotate, and scale the plane so it covers the wall area.  May take a little getting familiar to the 3D controls for this but not too hard!

4 - Add your own image to the plane material.  Materials hold data like color, glossiness, metallic-ness, even displacement/height for things like bump effects can be created if you wanna get more advanced.  For simulating wall paper not sure how much you need, but you could do anything really.

5 - Edit your 3D scene to match the image lighting.  This is the part that would require a bit of adjusting light values, light positions.  You could also do things like add other 3D objects like shelves on the walls, etc.  Hard to describe without more info of what you'd be trying to do - but Stager is pretty unlimited with lighting and layout capabilities.  

Here's a simple example where I just masked the stripes roughness so part of it is glossy and part is rough.  Then I played with a few lighting settings like intensity, rotation, and size. 

6 - Render the result.  Should be pretty fast for something simple like this and it generates a multi-layer PSD:

7 - Open the image in Photoshop and mask the rendered wall to the area you want to show.  lol sorry again that my result is so awful, I didn't spend any time on actual masking or lighting matching here, just wanted to show you the jist of how it could potentially work.

[markl78029787]

Are you referring to the 'public' beta of Pshop? When it says it will open Substance files, what extension type? Stager native files? ty

[markl78029787]

 

[Katie24680392xo8x]

Thank you, this is super thorough! Definitely a lot for me to pick up and learn here, but I'll give it a go following your tips. I'm a wallpaper designer, so I'm bummed my simplest tool for getting my pattern into a scene is gone, but hopefully I can get the hang of the newer way (and pray, pray, pray someday Photoshop gives us back a quickler method within the app!). Appreciete your time!

[markl78029787]

Do you 'apply' the newly created wallpaper in a scene in Photoshop? Do you have a variety 'scenes/rooms/walls'? Do you have a website where I could see some examples of how you show the wallpaper pattern? thanks

[markl78029787]

can you share a sample of how a 'finished' room would look ? thanks

[markl78029787]

If you don't want to go the beta route, try installing 2020 of Photoshop...make it doesn't replace your current version

[Katie24680392xo8x]

Thank you! I tried installing a few older versions and couldn't figure out which one still had the Lighting Effects tool. I got a new computer, and everyting updated some the older versions I'd been using!

[markl78029787]

To install an older version, Open Creative Cloud, find the current version of Photoshop, then click on ... on the right and then find the old version and install it...I can't remember if it asks you to keep the current version, but you do. So then you will have 2 versions available...

[markl78029787]

this version has the Lighting effects filter still...the video below with show how to install it

[Ares Hovhannesyan]

I encourage you to use Adobe Substance 3D Sampler for creating pattern as Substance Materials for importing into PS or Stager or Painter. Also you can use it for exporting in different bitmap format. Substance 3D Sampler | Substance 3D Sampler (adobe.com)                                                                                                 

[Alexandre Becquet]

Hello, yes like @Ares Hovhannesyan you should learn Adobe Substance sampler it's time saver for you. And i can say the new Adobe substance plug in in PS is very good and you'll find a way to do what you're doing usually 😉 
If you want help i can help you and if you few test i can do that and give you feedback 😉