Flickering Candle Effect

Ever wanted to create a flickering effect to a still photo of a candle? In this tutorial I will show you a quick and easy way to achieve this using adjustment layers and modifiers in Proshow Producer.

First let’s get ourselves an image of a candle.

Just about any candle image will do. For this project I used this wonderful image from blogpaul in Flickr.

If you would like to follow along with this tutorial, you can download the project file here. A PDF version of this tutorial is also available for download here.

Adding the layers

There will be two layers for this project. The first layer will be our candle image and the second is a radial gradient layer which we will later on use as an adjustment layer for our effect.

First add our candle image to a new slide by dragging it to an empty slide in the slide list.

Next let’s create our gradient layer

Double click our slide and select the Layers > Layer Settings tab or just simply press Ctrl+F4.

Right click anywhere on the layers list and select Add Layer > Add Gradient.

Make sure that the Presets value is set to Masks and the Type is Radial and select the very first preset option (white fading to black gradient).

In the colors section double click twice anywhere on the color bar to create two additional color stays. You should have 4 color stays at the end.

Use the following settings for each color stay.

If you used a different image than the one in the project file you might need to adjust the positions of the two middle color stays.

When you’re done, hit OK.

Your preview window should now look something like this.

If you don’t see the gradient layer just make sure that it’s at the top of your layer stack with the candle image below it.

Creating the adjustment layer

We are now going to convert our gradient layer into an adjustment layer.

Check the adjustment layer check box in the Layer settings tab. For the type select Intensity (Grayscale) and leave the invert option unchecked.

In the preview window, drag the gradient layer until the center crosshair is near the base of the light of the candle. It should be obvious by now that this gradient will become the glow of our candle.

Let’s make our candle flicker

To make our candle flicker open the Effects > Adjustment Effects tab by pressing Ctrl-F8.

With the gradient layer selected right click on the value to the right of the white point slider and select Add Modifier.

This should now bring up the modifier window. If you are not familiar with modifiers don’t worry. Hang in there and just follow along.

It takes time to master this part of the program and there are many materials on the web you can use as a reference. You can make a search at the Proshow Enthusiasts forum for starters.

Back to our project…

What we want to do is create a random adjustment to the white point value of our gradient layer to mimic the flickering effect of a candle.

To do this, follow these settings for our modifier.

TYPE OF ACTION: Add to Modifier
AMOUNT FROM FUNCTION: Random
WAVE BEGINS AT: Start of Slide
RANGE: 100
GRANULARITY: 5
SMOOTHING: 1

What this setting does is that it tells Proshow to modify the white point value of our layer to a random value between 0 – 100 and change this value every 0.05 seconds.

That should do it for now. Hit OK.

Notice the red nick at the top right of the white point value? That is an indicator that a modifier is in effect for this property.

Hit the preview button and this should already give you a nice flickering candle effect.

You might want to end here already but for me personally, I’d like to have a little more of the background showing off when the candle flickers so I add another modifier but this time to the brightness value.

Following the same process, right click on the value to the right of the brightness slider and select Add Modifier.

This time we will use a variable amount for our modifier based on the value of the white point which we edited earlier. Use these settings.

What this basically means is that Proshow will adjust the value of the brightness to 20% of the value of the white point.

This brightens the background when the candle is at its brightest and darkens the background when the candle is at its darkest. Quite a trick!

Hit OK and preview your work again. Notice how the background shows off better this time.

You can play around with the settings as you desire. Change the granularity value if you like to control how fast the candle flickers. Or the range if you like to control how bright it gets.

Would you like to view this tutorial as a PDF document? Download it here.

Would like to have a copy of the project file I used for this tutorial? Get it here.

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Tags : effects, flickering candle, producer, proshow 0 Comments