Edit Me-Summer Show Off

Last Sunday I shared this picture I took in Joshua Tree. There were a few inquiries on how I did this. Today, I'll tell you.

 First, you need a dark sky. A very dark sky. The night we went the moon was half full. It was soooo bright. But we knew this. We also knew that the moonset was around 1 AM. I started this series at 3 AM. We got there when it was still light out to scout out our location, set up the cameras and made sure we were ready. I also made sure to find the North star. It is the only star in the sky that is fixed and won't move. The other stars will appear to circle it. I just thought it looked cooler this way. If I had pointed the camera away from the North star then my star trails would have just been lines across the sky. You absolutely HAVE to have a tripod for this as well as a remote trigger. I used the wired one as it has a locking mechanism on the shutter button. My camera settings were ISO-100, F-5, SS-30s and manually focused to infinity.. I locked my shutter on for the 30 second intervals then climbed in my car for a nap. I let it run for 2 hours. When I put this together I only used 1 hour of the shoot as the second hour was too close to dawn and the sky was too bright. Also, this pic was starting to look way too busy. So this pic has 105 pictures. That's 52.5 minutes of sky movement.
For editing...I used Photoshop cs5. I loaded the pics in about 10 at a time. The first picture was going to be the main one. I copied and pasted the other pics onto the first one then set the layers to LIGHTEN. That allows the lightest parts of the pic(the stars) to blend in with the original picture. I did this 105 times. I would flatten the image after each group of ten to make it easier to work with. When this was my final result I may have sharpened the image a little but that's about all you can do with night shots.

A few extra tips:
~If it's windy then it's no good. Camera shake on long exposures will ruin the shot.
~Try 1 long exposure(using your bulb setting) instead of a bazillion 30 second ones. That camera needs to stay steady the whole time though. I would try for 45 minutes to an hour.
~You HAVE to manually focus the shot or your camera may retry to focus every 30 second shot. No good!
~Have a fully charged battery before starting a long series(and maybe a spare ready to go). My battery was a champ and went the distance but my hubs battery died after a couple of hours. He was done shooting for the night by the time I started the series for the shot above.
~I shot in RAW but it was a nightmare trying to process 105 RAW files for this. Next time I do this I think I will actually switch over to JPEG. It'll make post-processing so much easier.
~Make sure to spend some time enjoying the sky. We saw sooooo many meteors. It was AWESOME!!!
~Last, I would love to show you a 30 second shot as a before shot but stupid stupid me I trashed them all AND then deleted my trashcan.
~~~If you have any questions that I didn't answer here just ask.~~~

Edit Me...

This summer we get to showcase our own pictures to edit. This pic was taken a while ago(my nephew is in GA for the summer) but I just edited the pic special for him at his request. He saw my pic I did with a flag on my face and wanted me to add a dragon to his face.

What I did:

I took the clean edit and opened it in CS5,

I found a pic of a dragon in google images and opened it in CS5,

I copy and pasted the dragon onto his face,

I dropped the opacity way down on the dragon so I could see his features to reposition the dragon where I wanted it,

then I added a layer mask and meticulously removed any part of the dragon pic that I did not want,

When I was done masking I brought the opacity back up to where I wanted it. I think I liked it at around 60%. Still bright enough while giving it the painted on effect. Any brighter and it looked like a superimposed photo on his face.

And that's that!

Here is the original and clean edit.

Edit Me...

This weeks photo is from Andi at The Hollie Rogue.

SOOC by Andi

Edited by me

What I did:
I did a basic clean edit in ACR,
in Photoshop cs5 I ran Pure's action Pink Summers Day,
then I ran Everyday Elements action Florida,
tweaked the layers to taste,
cropped,
rounded the corners,
done!

Edit Me...

This weeks photo is from Kaylene at L'Instant.

SOOC by Kaylene

Edited by me

What I did:
I just did a simple clean edit in Adobe Camera Raw. The only thing of note here is that I bumped up the blues quite a bit.

Edit Me...

This weeks photo is from Diane at Butterflies In Time Photography.

SOOC by Diane

Edited by me

What I did:
I opened the pic in ACR,
I did a basic clean edit by adjusting wb, contrast and clarity,
moved the pic to Photoshop cs5,
ran Everyday Elements action Florida,
adjusted levels to taste,
cropped,
rounded corners,
Done!

This is my 600th post!

Edit Me...

This weeks photo is from Kristy at Life-n-Reflection.

SOOC by Kristy

Edited by me

What I did:
cropped,
bumped up the brightness and contrast,
added 2 Kim Klassen textures,
masked off a little texture from the flowers and the butterfly,
done!

Edit Me...

It was so weird to be on the other side last week. I missed participating! But, I'm baaaaaaaack!

This week's photo is from Alicia at Project Alicia. I'm more than a little jealous of the fisheye lens. It's on my wish list!!!

SOOC by Alicia

 My edit

Hold on to your seats cause I went a little nutso...
What I did:
Opened the photo in Photoshop cs5,
adjusted the curves to add light,
masked the light back off the clouds(any changes I made to the lighting drastically changed the clouds so I simply masked it off),
ran Pioneer Woman's action Fresh and Colorful,
adjusted the layers to taste,
masked it off the clouds,
added a solid color{soft yellow} at soft light,
adjusted the color opacity to 15%,
added a solid color{white} at soft light,
adjusted the color opacity to 50ish%,
ran Pioneer Woman's action Fresh and Colorful(again),
adjusted the layers to taste,
ran a high pass filter,
adjusted the opacity to 40ish%,
Flatten(actually, I flatten all my layers as I go),
done!

Edit Me...

This weeks photo is from Beth at Snaps of Our Life.

SOOC by Beth

Edited by me

What I did:
I opened the photo in Adobe Camera Raw,
adjusted the lighting, contrast and white balance,
moved the photo over to photoshop cs5,
sharpened the pic slightly,
ran Pioneer Woman's action Colorized,
cropped the photo to a square,
rounded the corners,
flatten,
done!

Edit Me...

This weeks photo is by Belle at Belle Pics Photography.


SOOC by Belle

Edited by me

What I did:
I used acr to fix the lighting a smidge,
then I moved the pic over to Photoshop cs5,
I painstakingly moved the boys over to one of my pics of a flower field,
I used a masking technique to mask the background away from their bodies and to mask the flowers and grass back around their feet,
when I was happy with all the masking I used Pioneer Woman's action Fresh and Colorful,
I removed the action from the whole picture except the boys as my pic was already edited,
I reduced the noise on the boys,
Done!

The flowers are from the Carlsbad Flower Fields in Carlsbad, CA. The funniest part about this picture is that you are not allowed to walk amongst the flowers. I hope I made it convincing enough to make it look like they were really out there.

Edit Me...

This weeks photo is by Stephanie who blogs at Behind The Camera and Dreaming.

SOOC by Stephanie

Edited by me

So, last night around 1 AM I noticed the post was up for the edit. I went over and grabbed the pic. I had just opened up Photoshop when my hubs declared a trip to the ER was necessary. It was a very long frustrating night. His surgical wound was draining excessively. All we did in the ER is play a waiting game. Anyhoodle, we finally left the hospital at 9 AM exhausted and starving(my last meal had been more than 12 hrs earlier). We came home, ate a quick breakfast and dropped into bed. I got about 5 hours of sleep. He had to get up and go back to the hospital for his routine dialysis. Lucky him! Needless to say, I edited this pic using my usual bag of tricks. There is no way I can come up with my exact step by step...I'm way too tired! I can get a doctors note if I need one. ;-)

Edit Me...

This weeks picture is from Bree at His Honey and Her Mommy.

SOOC by Bree

Edited by me

What I did:
tweaked the lighting in acr,
moved over to cs5 and continued tweaking the lighting,
ran Pioneer Woman's action Fresh and colorful,
adjusted layers to taste,
ran Pure's action Pink Summer Days 3 times,
cropped,
Done!

Edit Me...

This weeks photo is provided by Rosie from Leavesnbloom Studio.

SOOC by Rosie

Edited by me

What I did:
I did a basic clean edit in acr,
moved the photo to cs5,
ran Pioneer Woman's action Fresh and Colorful,
tweaked layers to taste,
ran Oh So Posh's action Whisper Linen,
flatten,
Done!

Edit Me...

This weeks photo is by Selena from Stoneyville.

SOOC by Selena

Edited by me(my official entry)

Edited by me

and yes, Edited by me

What I did:
I opened the pic in ACR,
tweaked the lighting...yada yada yada,
opened the pic in cs5,
cropped slightly,
cloned out the green blur on grooms lower jacket,
ran Pioneer Woman's action Fresh and Colorful,
adjusted the layers to taste,
3rd edit done!

Then I ran Coffeeshop's action Soft Autumn Glow,
adjusted layers to taste,
2nd edit done!

For the black and white edit I went back to my clean edit,
I ran Itty Bitty's action Dark B & W,
adjusted the layers to taste,
1st edit done!

Edit Me...

This weeks photo is provided by Linda at Coach House Crafting.

SOOC by Linda

Edited by me

What I did:
opened the pic in ACR,
adjusted WB, lighting, contrast and popped the blue a bit,
moved it over to PS cs5,
ran Pioneer Woman's action Fresh and colorful,
adjusted the opacity on the layers to taste,
flatten,
Done!

Edit Me...

This weeks photo is from Ashley Sisk over at Ramblings and Photos.

SOOC by Ashley

Edited by me

Edit Me...

This weeks photo is from Marilyn who blogs at The Artsy Girl Collection.

SOOC by Marilyn

Edited by me

What I did:
I used Photoshop cs5,
I used Pioneer Woman's action Heartland,
adjusted the layers in the action till I liked it,
added a mask to slightly remove the action to the boat which allowed the color to bleed back through. (I only wanted a little color to come back so I kept the opacity on my brush low.),
flatten,
Done!

Edit Me...

This weeks photo is from Tara who blogs at Wild Ginger Photography.

SOOC by Tara

Edited by me

What I did:
opened the photo in Adobe Camera Raw,
adjusted the lighting and white balance,
opened in Photoshop cs5,
cropped and cloned the top left corner,
ran Coffeeshop's action Baby Powder Room,
masked the layers within the action,
flatten,
sharpened the pic a little,
Done!