need help with photoshop..

[leviathan16]

i jus hav a camera and a 50mm lens.. i dont hav any external flash.. but i hav seen wat magic a flash can do.. can anyone help me understand the filter called lighting effect of photoshop with some example... or its creative usage...
i hav seen how the "flash-lit" pics pop out.. i tried dodging my pics but they just seem so unnatural..

[dlambert]

I'm not positive I understand the question (maybe post an example photo?), but I'll take a crack at this.

Photoshop can work a lot of magic, but it's pretty hard to match the vibrance you'll see by getting the lighting the way you want it in the first place. Think of Photoshop as fine-tuning -- not a substitute for good lighting.

Remember that all edits are destructive to some extent, though subtle edits obviously are very minimal in impact. When you start lightening photos (as in compensating for poor lighting), Photoshop has to work pretty hard to bring out those hidden details -- it's boosting details that are barely there at all, but it's working from a really compressed dynamic range, so the end result lacks the punch of a properly-lit (and exposed) original.

[Tito87]

Originally Posted by leviathan16

i jus hav a camera and a 50mm lens.. i dont hav any external flash.. but i hav seen wat magic a flash can do.. can anyone help me understand the filter called lighting effect of photoshop with some example... or its creative usage...
i hav seen how the "flash-lit" pics pop out.. i tried dodging my pics but they just seem so unnatural..

For what I understand, that filter is used to highlight any part of the image that you want to bring attention to. However, keep in mind that I'm extremely new to Photoshop, so what do I know?