Diffuse Light
When doing lighting it is important to understand what makes a diffuse light. In other words, knowing the difference between hard light and soft light is essential.
Hard light
What makes hard light different from soft light?
- Typically the shadow is very clear, not very soft or diffuse.
- It is clear where the light source is coming from.
- Hard light tend to bring out all the details. Therefore you often see diffuse lights being used to soften up portrait images.
- We often use hard light to bring mood and then use softer lights to brighten up the dramatic mood if needed.
Image by James Wheeler
Image by Ketan Kumawat
In real life and digital context, the type of lights that can produce hard lights are following:
- Point light
- Sun light
- Spotlight far away
- Area light far away (Commonly more used to soften scenes though)
What is important to keep in mind is that it is the scattering rays that defines what is hard or soft light. That means if the light rays have equal distance and they are parallel to each other, they will most likely create harsh shadows.
Original Image by Pixabay.
Soft Light
What makes soft light different from hard light?
- Soft light is the opposite of hard light. It can reach the point where the shadow itself is very bright and becomes very blurry. When that happens it is hard to separate the shadow from that actual bright area, that has no shadow.
- Generally the soft light comes from more than one area, often the sky or light bouncing off a surface. Therefore shadow in most context, is never completely black. This is because some light is coming from somewhere, that is diffuse light and fills in those areas.
- Portrait pictures, often of woman tend to use soft light. It avoids hard shadow and hides detail from the face. Personally, I don’t like soft light too much as it creates a flat image and from a creative point of view, it becomes boring to me. Generally, it is safe to use soft light for calm and pleasing feelings.
Image by Daniel Spase
Image by Bruno Cervera
In a real life and digital context typically you can create soft light effect by following methods:
- Photographer soft box or transparent image plane in front of the light source.
- Light passing through clouds, cloth or otherwise.
- Generally large light sources can create diffuse light.
- Light passing through something.
- Light reflecting from a surface such as bounce light.
- Area light is a big favourite for many when creating soft light digitally.
- Sky light in the software such as skybox etc
- Ambient light settings in digital software
- Emissive texture/material
In contrast to hard light, diffuse light have scattered light that goes everywhere.
Original image by Nout Gouns.
I hope this article was useful, best of luck with your work.