Photo Relighting
Hand it a photograph of one thing and it relights the frame — another hour, another direction, another hardness — leaving the object, the surface and the background exactly where they were. Two fields.
We made two examples, from two different photographs: late sun on a cut-glass perfume bottle and cloudy light on a leather boot. One goes harder and warmer, the other softer and cooler, so the pair shows the two directions the light can go rather than one filter applied twice.
The framing, the object and the background stay where they were. What changes is the light and, above all, the shadow. Warm light also warms the background, so check the shadow first to be sure it is not just a colour change. You need a photo with a clear shadow: an evenly lit object comes back almost identical to the original.
Generated for this library
Input
Object a faceted glass perfume bottle
Hour an hour before sunset, low and from the left, hard
Photograph perfume-front.png (1254 x 1254)
Returned 1 image · 1:1 · the same frame, another hour
object position, size, colour and marks all unchanged
camera same eye line and distance; outline lands on
itself
shadow long, thrown right, with a defined edge and
a bright caustic inside it
highlight moved onto the left facets; the right ones
have gone dark
colour the lit side warms, the shade stays the colour
the material is
words none, in any scriptYou fill in 2 fields — the braced lines at the top. Everything below them is fixed.
- 1The object, in three or four words
- 2The hour, and where the light comes from
Photo Relighting
What this makes
Hand it a photograph of one thing and it relights the frame — another hour, another direction, another hardness — leaving the object, the surface and the background exactly where they were. Two fields.
The whole template, in one piece. The steps below are the entire workflow.
How to use it
- Copy the whole template with the button above.
- Attach your photograph and paste the template in the same message.
- Replace the two FIELDS lines. In the second, give a direction and a height — without them nothing in the frame can move.
- Check the shadow first. If it is the same length and pointing the same way, the run graded the picture instead of relighting it, and that is the failure this template exists to catch.
- For a morning and an evening version, run the original twice rather than relighting the relit one.
What you swap
- The object, in three or four words
- a faceted glass perfume bottle
- The hour, and where the light comes from
- an hour before sunset, low and from the left, hard
Before it runs
- An actual photograph of the thing, attached to the message. There is nothing here for a description to work on.
- A shadow already in the picture. Relighting is moving the one that is there; a flat, shadowless shot gives the run nothing to move.
- One source. Two lights at two hours is not an hour, and the shadows stop agreeing.
- A direction you can name. 'Nicer light' is a mood; 'low and from the left' is a position, and only a position moves a shadow.
When to reach for it
When the set is right and the light is wrong, or when one product needs a morning version and an evening one. Templates in this genre relight by tinting the whole picture, which moves nothing and convinces nobody, because a real change of hour moves the shadow.
What changes
- One photograph in, one out — everything in the same position, lit at a different hour.
- The shadow moves, changes length and changes edge, because the source moved rather than the colour grade.
- The object keeps its own colour: warm light lands on it, it is not repainted warm.
- The camera holds, so the two frames stack as a before and after of one thing.
- Every highlight and shadow in the frame agrees with one named source, including the background's.
Pairs with
- Customer Snapshot EffectHand it a clean product photograph and it takes the picture again as a customer would — wrong light, off-centre, a real room behind it — with the product itself unchanged. Two fields.
- In-Use Room BackgroundHand it a photograph of one thing and it builds the room that thing is actually used in behind it — out of focus, overlapping nothing — while the object and the camera stay exactly where they were. Two fields.
- Plain Background Product ShotHand it a photograph of one thing and it takes everything away — no surface, no horizon, no props — leaving the object on one flat colour with one soft shadow under it. Two fields; the listing shot.