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REVIEWS
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Hopefully in the image of the bedroom above you noticed what is, for me, Light!'s most exciting feature--the combination of matte extraction, light casting and displacement. Notice how, in that image, the vertical blinds do not simply cast light in a single direction? Notice how the stripes of light actually seem to follow many of the contours in the room? This is owing to Light!'s displacement functionality. There's no manual creation of displacement maps going on here. No masking whatsoever. The program is simply interpreting the grayscale values of the image as displacement data.
The image below might illustrate this more clearly. [an error occurred while processing this directive]
Here, the light filter is following the gradations of the fake columns in the image but leaving the plain background alone. Note that this is an image on a single layer using a single application of the Light! plugin, not some multiple-step process. It's just the click of a few buttons.
I can't speak highly enough about this displacement functionality. In Photoshop, displacement maps are completely based on trial and error. There's no preview, and the effects aren't editable. You try to apply a second displacement map, and you wind up with a big mess. But with Light!, the process is simple and interactive. Simply glide the Displacement slider until you find the positive or negative value you want. That's it. The rest is automatic.
And notice how this displacement can also be used to create the illusion of distance between the subject and background, as in the second image below.
Again, an image on a single layer with no mask and no transparency.
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