How to turn off Lighting Effects? My god.

[Tom Atkinson]

My god.  What an intensely frustrating experience, trying to turn off the lighting effects.

I am a bit of a newbie and had been experimenting, and got to the point where I now just wanted to turn them off completely, so as to get back to where I was before I started the experimenting.

I was unable to turn them off!!  I tried every kind of reset (reset all filters, reset to initial values, reset to factory defaults, etc), but none worked.  Trying to manually change the lighting effects so that they had no effect also did not work!

In the end, I did CTRL-Z many many times to get back to an appearance I was prepared to live with.

How on earth do you turn them off?  Every attempt to manually neutralise them just made things worse!

Surely there is an easy way to turn them off!  What a frustrating experience.  HOW DO YOU TURN THEM OFF?

Gimp 3.2 on Windows 11 Home.

Thanks.

   

[MrsP-from-C]

Can't see your attachment. 
Don't understand what you want to be turned off, sorry.

[rich2005]

@MrsP-from-C  The attachment shows here.  Downloads as well.  Might be browser thing. However you might get the idea from this. (if it shows)

   

(1) The problem with lighting effects is it is a very old plugin (It has been tweaked to keep it alive but..Version 0.2.0, March 15 1998).  The effect is applied to the layer and there is no going back, except for a ctrl-z undo.  No reversible layer effects  (fx) with this one.
Older ways might be a simple duplicate the layer as a backup
Do all your layer mask editing first, then a new-from-visible and apply lighting effects on that.

(2) The layer stack looks a bit odd. Lighting effects on that grey layer ??  Don't like the effect, fill with grey and do the lighting effect again.

There are other ways, the gmic_gimp_qt plugin has a "light leaks" filter, but that is not future-editiable either.

[rich2005]

(09-10-2026, 04:03 AM)Tom Atkinson Wrote: My god.  What an intensely frustrating experience, trying to turn off the lighting effects.

I am a bit of a newbie and had been experimenting, and got to the point where I now just wanted to turn them off completely, so as to get back to where I was before I started the experimenting. ....snip....

Experimenting is the best way to go.  You will develop your own favourite ways of editing. There are always several ways to get to a desired result.

As quick exercise, I might use a work-flow along these lines.

   

(1) Backups - can be as simple as duplicating a layer and moving out the way.  There is a plugin that takes snapshot .xcf files at intervals, but you can do that yourself.
(2) It is worth using a layer group (or groups) to keep your editing together. 
(3) For old plugins like lighting effects You can do "new-from-visible", work on that and keep previous work safe.
(4) I had a look at the gmic plugin, http://www.gmic.eu the light leaks filter, That uses a black layer in Screen mode, you could probably paint one yourself. Do not like the result ? Fill layer with black and start again.
(5) As an example of what is editable, when you get that fx icon on the layer click on it for options. 

...but the main thing is, keep experimenting.

[MrsP-from-C]

@Rich, 
yes I can see what OP means now. Thank you.

[sallyanne]

Try using a different filter or tool. Lighting effects shouldn't show then until you want to bring them up again.
Rich is right too. The only way you will learn what does what is by experimenting.