If you've got an image with unlit light bulbs, you can make them glow in Photoshop. Let's show you how to turn on the lights.

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.

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.

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:

And here's the After image with the lights turned 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.

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:

Here's our After image:

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:

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.

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

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.

Craig Boehman is a Mumbai-based American photographer. He writes articles about Photoshop and photo editing for MakeUseOf.com.

Join our newsletter for tech tips, reviews, free ebooks, and exclusive deals!