Over the years I've posted many images with unique lighting effects, and sometimes people ask how that lighting happened, assuming it was done with a flash(s) or another light source. 

If you have followed me over the years, you know I have never used a flash system, and only on a very rare occasion would i use a handheld LED light for a little fill light in a dark area of a subject, but like I said, that is very rare when that happens.

Any special effects in the lighting of my images comes from post processing.  Lately most have been created in Smart Photo Editor, and in the past, I have used Nik Software's Color Efex Pro. 

When I process an image, I don't say I'm going to add a special lighting effect to it, I just go into Smart Photo Editor and click through the pages of special effects filters, and if I happen to see a lighting effect filter that works, I'll go with it.