Have you ever wanted to turn on the lights in an image with light bulbs? In this tutorial, we'll show you how to paint color onto those unlit light bulbs in Photoshop so that the lights will look like they've been switched on and glow.

Our examples include lights in a tunnel and in a kitchen. Let's get started.

How to Turn On the Lights in a Tunnel

There are many ways to create the lighting effect in Photoshop. We're going to take the painterly approach that involves creating a couple of blank layers on which the light can be painted onto the light bulbs. Then to finish it off, we'll create a Curves layer to add the ambient light to the surface of the enclosure.

If you want to follow along, you can download the example image from Pexels.

  1. Create a new blank layer by clicking on the + icon or pressing Shift + Ctrl + N.
    Step 1 New Blank Layer
  2. Change the Blend Mode to Lighten.
    Step 2 Blend mode to Lighten
  3. Press B for the Brush tool and select a Soft Round brush.
    Step 2 Soft Round Brush
  4. Set the Flow to 10 %.
    Step 3 Flow 10 percent
  5. Change the Foreground Color to white. Press the D and X keys to toggle to white.
    Step 4 Foreground Color White
  6. Brush over the filaments in each of the bulbs. Make sure the bulbs in the foreground are slightly brighter than those in the background. Increase and decrease the Brush size using the bracket keys [ and ]. Also ensure to make the center of the lights brighter than the outer portions.
    Step 6 Paint white over the filaments in each bulb
  7. Create a second blank layer on top of the layer stack.
    Step 7 Create a second blank layer
  8. Set the Blend Mode to Overlay.
    Step 8 Blend mode to Overlay
  9. Left-click on the Foreground Color icon and choose an orange hue. Click OK.
    Step 9 Choose an orange hue
  10. With the Brush tool selected, make sure the Flow is set to around 10 %.
    Step 10 Set Flow to 10 percent
  11. Brush over all the lights, slowly building the effect for each light bulb in the tunnel. It's okay to go over the lines of the bulbs a little.
    Step 11 Brush over bulbs
  12. Press L for the Lasso tool. Select an area around the lights at the top where the ambient light will fall, as shown below.
    Step 12 Select ambient light area
  13. Right-click inside the selection and choose Feather.
    Step 13 Right click inside the selection and choose Feather
  14. Set the Feather Radius to 350 and click OK.
    Step 14 Set the Feather Radius to 350
  15. Create a Curves adjustment layer.
    Step 15 Create a Curves Adjustment layer
  16. Select the Blue channel from the dropdown menu.
    Step 16 Select the Blue channel
  17. Click and drag the line down to create a yellow ambient light in the selection, as shown below.
    Step 17 Drag the line down as shown
  18. Go to the RGB channel.
  19. Adjust the white line to raise the shadows, as shown below.
    Step 19 Raise the shadows

By slowly building up the light effects, we've created the illusion of the lights being switched on inside this tunnel.

Here's our Before image:

Before Image in tunnel

And here's the After image with the lights turned on:

After Image with lights on

Naturally, you could continue editing the lights and use dodging and burning techniques to further enhance the image. You could even turn the image black and white except for one color.

Turning On the Lights in a Kitchen

The same method can be applied to many types of images, including one of a kitchen. We won't go over the same steps again, but you can download the kitchen image from Pexels if you want to try this for yourself.

Here's our Before image:

Kitchen Before image

Here's our After image:

Kitchen After

The only difference is that we used white for both blank layers, instead of an orange hue for one of them, which gives us a more realistic look in this setting. But if you wanted to add another color layer in Overlay, you can achieve a similar effect as our prior example.

In the image below, we added a bit of color:

Kitchen with colored lights

Additionally, you can group the layers into a folder for organizational purposes if you have other edits to make. All you have to do is click on the top layer and Shift + click on the bottom layer that you want, and then press Ctrl + G to group everything into a folder.

Showing a Grouped folder

You could also apply third-party effects from the NIK Collection to further enhance your images.

Turn On the Lights in Photoshop

All you need to do is add a few layers in Photoshop to make the light bulbs in any image glow. With a bit of creativity, you can make any scene with light bulbs look more realistic by turning them on.