The Concrete Guide of Diffused Light Photography You Should Apply for Portraits

Last Updated on November 16, 2022 by Peter Wood


The importance of light in photography cannot be overstated. Different angles of light and even the different times of day will give the viewer different visual impressions of the subject or person being photographed. Diffuse light photography is used for portrait images. Diffuse light is also known as soft light, which eliminates shadows, softens the face, and allows the subject to relax without squinting. How do you get the optimal diffuse light photography with cameras or post-processing programs? You can find the answer from the article easily.

Diffused Light Photography

Part 1: What is Diffused Light Photography

Just as mentioned above, diffused light is also known as soft light, which is a uniform light emitted from a light source within the propagation range of the light source. As for diffused light photography, it is taken when the light is spread evenly on the surface of an object, which can soften the shadows on the surface of the object or person. Moreover, it is also frequently used in still life photography, film, and television.

Where Can You Find the Diffused Light?

It is one of the most frequently used photography for the indoor studio. There are 3 different methods to take diffused light photography. Just find out when you can get the desired effects for your photos.

1. Take some shoots during the day on an overcast day.

2. Use bounce lights to turn the hard light to the soft light.

3. Choose diffusion materials to illuminate your subject.

Indoor Soft Light Photo

What are the Drawbacks of Diffused Light?

However, diffused lighting has its drawbacks. When you use this kind of light, you may reduce the exposure of your subject. To solve this problem, you can try to choose to have a more intense light source to get the optimal diffused light photography.

Drawbacks of Diffused Light

Part 2: How to Take Gorgeous Photos with Diffused Flash

Here you can find the charm of diffuse light photography. But how do you take some gorgeous photos with diffused flash? Besides the soft light condition as mentioned above, you need to make sure the rays go in different directions and make sure of a stable environment.

Make Sure a Stable Diffused Light

If you cannot take shots on an overcast day, you can simply reduce glare and harsh shadows, which provides soft edges or no edges at all. A professional on-camera diffuser is a choice to provide a slightly different approach to diffusing the light. Moreover, you can also use the soft-boxes or an umbrella to produce broad lighting for diffused light photography.

Stable Diffused Environment

Camera Settings for Diffused Light

To make the most of perfect diffused lighting conditions, you should set up the camera settings and make some adjustments for the optimal diffused light photography, such as 1/125 shutter speed as the starting point, keep your ISO to a minimum, between 120 and 220, and even adjust the white balance to cloud, shade, or a custom setting.

Camera Settings Diffused

Part 3: How to Make Diffused Light Photography

Whether you need to polish the diffused light photography or apply the soft light effect to the taken shots, WidsMob AI Retoucher is the desired choice with the AI algorithm. Besides the soft light, vivid, LOMO, dark light, and other lights, you can also adjusted a series of adjust features to explore the different effects within one click. Moreover, there are some basic adjustments for face-clean AI algorithms.

1. Provide classic lights, such as soft light, dark light, LOMO, vivid, etc.

2. Adjust exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, saturation, and more.

3. Support AI Face Clean feature to polish skin, shine, eye, and blemish.

4. Advanced AI algorithms for face mosaic, cartoonize, and photo retouch.

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Step 1: Once you have installed WidsMob AI Retoucher, you can launch the program on your computer. Click the Import button to upload the portrait file into the program. Moreover, you can also click the Plus icon or drag-n-drop the files accordingly.

Import Photo Retoucher

Step 2: Double-click the portrait image to enter the editing window. You can click the Filters option on the left side and choose the Soft Light option from the Classic menu to make a diffused light photo. You can also choose LOMO, Vivid, and Dark Light to get stunning effects.

Soft Light Photo Retoucher Vivid Light Photo Retoucher

Step 3: When you need to adjust the soft lights manually, simply go to the Adjust option on the left side and tweak the different parameters, including exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, saturation, vibrance, temperature, sharpness, tint, vignette, opacity, and others.

Adjust Parameters for Soft Light Retoucher

Step 4: Moreover, you can also combine different photo filters to get the files as your requirements. Once you have done the whole process, you can simply click the Save As button to export the diffused light photography on your computer.

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Part 4: FAQs about Diffused Light Photography

1How to make diffused light photography with Photoshop?
Open the image you need to edit in Photoshop and select the layer of that image. Find the Filter option in the top toolbar to select the Diffuse option from Stylize. Choose the desired mode from the list to make diffused light photography, such as lighten only before clicking the OK button.
2How to create diffused light outdoors?
A simple white diffusion fabric can help you create diffused light photos outdoors. You can also choose a light modifier to diffuse those strong rays. Of course, taking advantage of the locations, times, and even angles of light can create diffused light photography easily.
3Hard light V.S. soft light, what are the differences?
The hard light creates high-contrast scenes with harsh shadows and sharp, bright highlights. As for the soft light, it has scattered rays. But you can always take advantage of the white balance, distance, and other factors to switch from hard light to soft light, or vice versa.

Conclusion

How to get a diffuse light image? Here are some approaches when shooting, such as using external tools or diffuse flash. You can also post-edit the image by using WidsMob AI Retoucher. Moreover, here are the definitions as well as the tips for making diffused light photography you should know.

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