Possible to Add Christmas Lights to Buildings?

LB
Posted By
Larry_Bogovich
Jan 11, 2004
Views
769
Replies
3
Status
Closed
I have never used Photoshop. In fact, I do not even own Photoshop. But I have been looking for an ironclad excuse to purchase it (like I need one). I do a lot of 3D visualization work (Autocad/Max) and Photoshop would be very beneficial.

Here’s the question — is it possible to take a photograph of a building and then, with Photoshop or some plug-in, add Christmas lights to the eaves, roof lines, etc.? If so, I will purchase the program immediately.

(If there are any Sea Ranchers participating in this forum, and if you recognize my name, I think you will know where this is heading.)

Thanks.

Larry B

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DM
Don_McCahill
Jan 11, 2004
Well you can do it, but not just by stringing a line across. You could build a brush with brush dynamics and color dynamics that might do the trick fairly quickly. It would take you a few hours to figure out the process though, if you are new to PS.
B
BLUDVLZ
Jan 12, 2004
Larry,

I had this very challenge come up about 5 years ago. So here’s what I did…

In Corel Draw (verson 8 at the time) was to create a series of Christmas lights in different colors and save them as an image brush. I drew a line of lights with this new brush, saves as a PSD and then imported my christmas lights into my Photoshop image. Added a glow and reflection for each light to the surface of the building and voila! Christmas lights. Whole thing took me maybe 20 minutes to do (which included creating the original vector drawings of the lights).

At the time, this wasn’t possible in Illustrator, but with more recent versions, it is. So if you don’t have/don’t like Corel, you have another option available to you if you want to use this method.

HTH
PC
Philo_Calhoun
Jan 12, 2004
It could be done: photograph some Christmas lights, carefully cut out the background and copy/paste them into the image you want. But I agree with Bludvlz: it would be much easier to do in a vector program like Illustrator (done on a separate layer from the original image). Another easy way to do it would be in Painter with image sprayer.

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