AI Image Relighting: Transform Photo Lighting with ICLight V2

Lighting makes or breaks a photo. A portrait shot under harsh midday sun looks flat and unflattering. The same face lit by golden hour sunlight looks like a magazine cover. Professional photographers spend thousands on lighting equipment and years learning how to use it. AI relighting lets you skip all of that.

With ICLight V2 and Arteza's Relight tool, you upload any photo and transform its lighting in seconds. Golden hour warmth, moody moonlight, neon cyberpunk glow, soft studio lighting — all from a single source image. No physical lights. No reshooting. No Photoshop layer stacking.

This tutorial walks you through every feature of the Relight tool: the 7 built-in presets, the 6 light direction controls, and how to write custom prompts for lighting effects that go beyond presets.

How AI Relighting Works

Traditional photo editing adjusts existing light — you can brighten shadows, cool highlights, or add a gradient overlay. But you cannot fundamentally change where the light is coming from or what kind of light it is. If a photo was shot under fluorescent office lights, no amount of Lightroom sliders will make it look like golden hour.

AI relighting is different. ICLight V2 understands the 3D structure of your scene. It identifies the subject, estimates depth and surface normals, and then re-renders the lighting as if the photo were taken under entirely different conditions. The result is not a color filter — it is a physically plausible re-illumination of the scene.

This means shadows move, highlights shift, reflections update, and the overall mood changes in a way that looks natural rather than edited.

The 7 Lighting Presets Explained

Arteza's Relight tool includes 7 carefully tuned lighting presets. Each one maps to a real-world lighting scenario that photographers and cinematographers use regularly.

1. Golden Hour

Prompt: Warm golden hour sunlight from the side, long shadows, rich amber tones, cinematic warmth.

Golden hour is the period just after sunrise or just before sunset when sunlight travels through more atmosphere and takes on warm amber tones. It is widely considered the most flattering natural light for portraits and landscapes. This preset adds directional warmth, extends shadows, and wraps the scene in rich amber hues.

Best for: Portraits, outdoor scenes, lifestyle photography, social media content that needs warmth.

2. Blue Hour

Prompt: Cool blue twilight lighting, soft diffused shadows, serene blue-purple atmosphere.

Blue hour is the brief window before sunrise or after sunset when the sky turns deep blue. It produces cool, even illumination without harsh shadows. This preset shifts the color temperature cool, softens shadows, and adds a serene blue-purple cast.

Best for: Cityscapes, moody portraits, product shots that need a calm and elegant feel.

3. Studio Softbox

Prompt: Professional studio lighting with large softbox, even illumination, clean soft shadows.

A softbox produces large, diffused light that wraps around the subject with smooth shadow transitions. This is the standard setup for headshots, product photography, and catalog imagery. The preset creates clean, professional illumination that flatters every subject.

Best for: Headshots, product photography, e-commerce images, any photo that needs to look polished and professional.

4. Candlelight

Prompt: Warm intimate candlelight from below, flickering golden glow, deep shadows.

Candlelight creates dramatic, warm illumination with strong contrast between lit and shadowed areas. The light source is low and close, producing upward-casting shadows and a golden glow. This preset works beautifully for intimate, atmospheric images.

Best for: Portraits with a moody feel, food photography, still life, romantic or intimate scenes.

5. Moonlight

Prompt: Cool silvery moonlight from above, blue-white tones, mysterious atmosphere.

Moonlight is cold, silvery, and comes from above. It creates deep shadows and a slightly eerie, mysterious quality. This preset shifts lighting to cool blue-white tones with overhead directionality.

Best for: Fantasy and horror aesthetics, nighttime scene simulation, dramatic portraits, creative projects.

6. Neon Glow

Prompt: Vibrant neon lighting, pink and cyan colors, cyberpunk atmosphere, sharp colored shadows.

Neon lighting uses multiple colored light sources that cast vivid, contrasting shadows. Pink and cyan is the classic cyberpunk combination. This preset adds strong colored illumination with sharp shadow edges and high-contrast color mixing.

Best for: Cyberpunk aesthetics, nightlife scenes, fashion photography, social media content that needs visual punch.

7. Window Light

Prompt: Natural soft window light from the left, gentle diffused illumination, airy and bright.

Window light is the most accessible natural light for indoor photography. It creates soft, directional illumination that is bright on one side and gently falls off on the other. The preset produces a clean, airy look that is universally flattering.

Best for: Indoor portraits, lifestyle photography, home interior shots, any scene that benefits from soft natural light.

Light Direction Controls

Beyond presets, the Relight tool lets you control the direction of light. You can choose from 6 directions: top, front, back, bottom, left, and right.

Direction control is powerful when combined with presets or custom prompts. For example:

• Golden Hour + Left: Mimics late afternoon sun streaming in from the side — classic cinematic lighting.
• Studio Softbox + Front: Even, flat illumination ideal for product shots and passport-style photos.
• Moonlight + Top: Overhead lunar glow that emphasizes depth and creates dramatic under-eye shadows.
• Neon Glow + Back: Rim lighting effect with neon colors outlining the subject from behind.

Experiment with directions to find the combination that serves your image best. Small changes in direction can dramatically shift the mood.

Writing Custom Lighting Prompts

The 7 presets cover common scenarios, but the real power is in custom prompts. You can type any lighting description and ICLight V2 will attempt to render it.

Effective custom prompts include:

• Light source type: "Soft diffused light from a large paper lantern"
• Color: "Warm orange-red firelight glow"
• Direction: "Rim light from behind with slight lens flare"
• Mood: "Dramatic chiaroscuro lighting, deep blacks, single harsh spotlight"
• Environment: "Overcast daylight, flat and even, no harsh shadows"

Examples of strong custom prompts:

• "Underwater caustic light patterns, cool blue-green, dappled shadows"
• "Sunrise through fog, warm diffused glow, soft halation around edges"
• "Three-point studio lighting, key light from left, fill from right, hair light from above"
• "Stained glass window light, multicolored warm tones, patterned shadows"
• "Harsh direct flash, flat lighting, red-eye effect, snapshot aesthetic"

The more specific you are about the quality, color, direction, and character of the light, the better results you will get.

Step-by-Step Tutorial

1. Go to the Relight tool at /edit/relight.
2. Upload your image by dragging and dropping or clicking the upload area.
3. Choose a preset or write a custom lighting prompt in the text field.
4. Select a light direction from the 6 available options.
5. Click Generate and wait a few seconds for the AI to process.
6. Compare the result using the before/after slider to see exactly what changed.
7. Download the result or run another edit with different settings.

Each relight costs 8 credits. You get 50 free credits when you sign up, which gives you 6 relights to experiment with.

When Relighting Works Best

AI relighting produces the strongest results when the subject is clearly defined and the scene has enough structure for the model to understand depth. Portraits, product photos, and architectural shots work extremely well. Flat textures, abstract patterns, and heavily occluded scenes are more challenging.

For best results:

• Use high-resolution source images
• Ensure the subject is well-separated from the background
• Avoid extremely dark or overexposed sources — the model needs tonal information to work with
• Combine relighting with other edit tools for a complete workflow: upscale first for more detail, relight for mood, then inpaint for any final touch-ups

Relighting vs. Traditional Photo Editing

| Feature | AI Relighting | Lightroom / Photoshop | |---|---|---| | Changes light direction | Yes | No | | Changes light type | Yes | No | | Processing time | ~5 seconds | 15-60 minutes | | Skill required | None | Advanced | | Cost | 8 credits (~$0.16) | $10-55/month subscription | | Physically plausible shadows | Yes | Manual only |

AI relighting does not replace traditional editing for fine-tuned color grading or local adjustments. It replaces the need to reshoot under different lighting conditions, which is far more valuable. Use relighting for the broad strokes, then fine-tune in your editor of choice if needed.