Full Moon: Multiple Exposures In Lightroom And Photoshop
Lesson 10 from: Snap The Perfect Night ShotTim Cooper
Full Moon: Multiple Exposures In Lightroom And Photoshop
Lesson 10 from: Snap The Perfect Night ShotTim Cooper
Lesson Info
10. Full Moon: Multiple Exposures In Lightroom And Photoshop
Lessons
Class Intrduction
05:40 2Milky Way Image: Combining Exposures
04:32 3Milky Way Image: Simple Selections And masking
06:37 4Star Stacking: Combining Layers With Lighten Blending Mode
09:09 5Star Stacking: Layer Masks
05:06 6Car Trails: Merging Multiple Exposures
09:19 7Car Trails: Fixing Uneven Sky
08:38 8Light Painting: And Layering
03:12Lesson Info
Full Moon: Multiple Exposures In Lightroom And Photoshop
all right, so that the Lemme hear folks like I was talking about earlier when shooting the full moon is that in a typical situation, when the moon is already up in the sky and the sun has set, you get one of two things. Either get some foreground detail and the moon is completely blown out with no man in the moon. No, no cheese, no craters, nothing. It's just pure, blank white. Or if you decide that you want to get detail in the moon, which is what you have here, then the whole frame is completely black. It's just the fact that there's no sunlight hitting the ground or the foreground, and there is sunlight illuminating the moon. So that's why I say it's always best to shoot the full moon two or three days before the moon comes up. In that way, the moon will come up just as the sun is setting. Sunlight hits the land, illuminates the land, sun hits the moon, illuminates the moon. Both of these things air within the same exposure range. Easy peasy, you're done. But that's not all the time...
. We don't always want that exact scenario. That's a very specific look in this case, I was down with my partner Gabriel vitamin or Gabriel Biederman down in Florida on a national parks at night workshop. And this was what I wanted. I wanted this look to the water, which was ended up being a 32nd exposure. But the moon was already up in the sky. Basically, what I'm getting here, the reason that I can actually even see the water is number one. The moon is illuminating it. But also, we're getting city light from Miami, Uh, coming in and illuminating some of these these areas. But at 30 seconds, the moon is completely blown out. So if I look at my next exposure down, this was four seconds, and I get some sky detail, which I like, but the moon is still blown out. And then when I get down to 11 25th of a second is when I first start seeing detail in the moon so you could see these air many, many, many stops apart in order to to capture both of these. So what we can dio is try to blend them together and making it look realistic is kind of tough. We've all seen those photographs of moons over laid on images that just look completely fake. Any time you're doing a composite like that, you've got a You've got to think about the angle of the light, the color of the light and the brightness. And to some degree, the contrast is well, and all of that has to match. So in this case will attempt to do that. I'm going to take this image, this image, and let's just look at this moon, See if there's any detail in that one. Ah, like the other one. Better. All right. So we're gonna take the 11 25th the four seconds and the 30 seconds and blend those together, right? So will begin, as we always do by going to photo at it in open as layers in photo shop. Okay, so in this case, what we have is the darkest moon on top, so we're just going to save that for later. I'm just going to undo that eyeball there, and we'll be looking at thes two photographs and it looks like they're pretty well aligned. I'm just kind of going back and forth looking to make sure that this stilt house and Biscayne Bay doesn't move and it doesn't. And what I need to do is figure out which which part of each image I want. Now, frankly, I like the water in this one in 30 seconds. The water picked up this really nice, smooth, kind of texture that I'm enjoying. But I don't like the fact that this is super blown out here. So in this case, I want the top image I want Use this and blend it together with that. So I'm gonna begin by, Let's see, maybe, yeah, let's try. Um, let's just kind of try painting that in. I'm gonna click on this layer and then create an a mask. Click on my brush tool. And now, wherever I paint with, um, now wherever a paint with black is going to show through to this bottom layer. All right, so what I could do is click on here and paint with point with my Pete with black, and I'd be seeing the water underneath. But that's a little bit convoluted, as you can see exactly. Have to go over and paint with this one, and that's that's a pain. So what I'll do instead. And I'm just hitting control all t to go back in time. Here is put this layer on top and move that mask up to there. Now, when I paint with black on this layer, I will get that water coming in underneath. Now, of course, at first blush, that doesn't look good, cause it's too darn dark. But we can fix that. Okay, But that's the idea. You can now see that that black is coming through or the black is punching a hole in that layer and showing it down into this layer. All right, now, to make this look realistic, what we're gonna need to dio is blend this together with a soft edge brush a little bit. So I'm gonna make my brush little softer and get those edges to blend in together like that. There again, it's looking a little more realistic, and I'm actually going to go in here, click on that layer, go up to properties and feather that mask, and that will start to blend that stuff together even more. Now I'm gonna use this masked by command, clicking on it and reloading that selection, and I'm gonna try to brighten this bottom layer by using an adjustment layer. Okay, so you can see what I've done here. Now, this adjustment will only be adjusting this layer. And if I tend to bring that up a little bit, it's going to get whips. Um, if I tend to brighten that up a little bit, we will still have some detail in there, but it won't be completely blown out, and that's gonna make it a little bit more realistic. Um, let's see. Let's get rid of been this down so I could see my whole curve here. There we go. Um, Now, the only thing is, I have to make sure that this blends together. So I'm gonna pull that back down and you can see as I'm pulling that down, I'm starting to the faded area. The blended area here is starting to become closer together. All right, that's not too terrible. Bad. Um, I think I might want to see a little bit more feather on these masks, and so that might help that a little bit. And ultimately, maybe even go a little bit brighter on this yellow right in here. I'm just not loving that so I might create another mask and brighten it up. But for now, we'll leave that go. But know that I would make that area just a touch. I think a touch brighter and maybe just in the curve in that way is gonna help. Um, So the next thing I need to dio is I need to take this sky here and have that come through. So what I'll do is grab my quick, select tool and just make a quick selection of that sky. And on this mask here, I would fill that with black. So black is my foreground color. So I will press all to delete, and there we go. So I actually made a mistake earlier, and I was wondering why this wasn't working. But my mask is opposite of what I need. You'll remember when I was trying to lighten up this bottom and nothing was happening. That's because the bottom was black. This mask should be upside down. And now when I break in that area, it's gonna look a little bit more like what? I wanted it to a little bit brighter, but still retain some detail. All right, Now what I just did. Here was I filled this layer appear with black, and that allowed this layer to come through. The only problem is that looks a little bit bright to me or a little bit dark on this edge. And the reason it is so is because I blurred this mask beforehand. And this is part of the problem when you use the properties to feather a mask so you can see that this part of the mask here I feathered earlier and I wanted to make a hard edge along that water line there. And when I just filled it with black, it went on to a mask that had already been softened. So using this feather up in the properties box is really convenient. But you may also at times want to use the feather are blur Gaussian blur so that you don't end up with this effect here. So let me show you what I'm gonna dio. I'm gonna click on this mask itself and go back up to the properties here and bring the feather back down to zero. Now notice how that just fix this line up in here and now this looks much more realistic. But now this area down here is not feathered any longer. So let me go up here and I'll show you what is still feathered. I must have painted that and with a brush that makes sense. All right, So grab my brush and feather that even a little bit more, okay? And maybe just kind of worked back and forth with my black and my white brushes, using a feathered edge to kind of make that look more realistic. And I'm just looking for that kind of happy medium in there. And I might go back to my curve here and lift up shadow values so that that the darkest values within the contrast area here are not so overbearing. Something more like that. And as you guys can see, I'm just kind of going back and forth with feathering these edges and trying to figure out just the right amount to blend these two together because it's a very big I'm asking a lot of photo shop and of the believer to believe that you're getting detail in this area when the water looks like that. So I may even do something a little bit different at the end here to try to blend that together better. But let's not worry about that. Let's get back to the moon. So what I'm gonna do is if I include my moon, I am only able to see the black around it. So what I actually have to dio is go in here and select the moon itself. So once again, I think Quick select. We've been getting lucky with that today. Not my favorite tool, but it certainly is easy. I'm gonna go in and get that moon selected. It was a pretty good job. Remember you guys, you always want to be on the layer of the thing that you're selecting. All right, that's looking pretty good. And in this case, I think what I'm gonna dio is copy that to a brand new layer. Right? So when this is selected, if I hit command J, what it does is selection drops it onto a new layer. And now there is that moon sitting over that bright part in the sky
Ratings and Reviews
Constantin Simion
Very good!!! Mr. Cooper presents simple Photoshop tools that can make a substantial improvement of the pictures in a way that everyone can understand.