How To Create Fireworks In Photoshop

So, y'all know how to take photos of fireworks, only what tin can you do with them at present? Maybe yous have a groovy composition of a urban center, with fireworks lighting the sky above, or maybe, like me, you only got a few shots of fireworks alone in an empty heaven.

In this tutorial, you will learn how piece of cake it is to blend these fireworks into your mural and cityscape photos, and so that you tin transform an image from something similar this:

To this:

This tutorial will comprehend the basics of blending objects into your photos. But please remember that the goal of learning techniques like this one is not only so y'all can blend fireworks into your photos, just more generally so that you go comfortable with using certain tools and workflows in a mode that yous perhaps haven't earlier. This will requite you the skills and experience to tackle whatever mail service-processing roadblocks you hitting in the future. If you desire to see what'due south possible across the basic blending of objects, there are also many manufactures that delve deeper into other types of blending, from blending multiple exposures of cityscapes, to creating realistic HDRs, and blending whatsoever landscape photos.

What You Need:

• One photograph with plenty of empty sky.
• One (or more than) photos of fireworks.

If y'all want to follow along with this tutorial, you can download the background photo plus the fireworks here.

The complete workflow is also in this video, if yous would rather lookout it:

one. Positioning Your Fireworks

You can put the fireworks anywhere you like in your photo, although it helps to put them in the sky. Don't worry if there are buildings or other objects partially blocking the heaven. In fact, it will seem more natural to have the fireworks partially obscured like this.

Outset, you lot should open your base landscape or cityscape photo into Photoshop, and add the fireworks photos as layers on height, by dragging them into the same workspace as the base layer. They volition then sit on acme of your base photo as layers.

Select each fireworks layer individually, and utilise the 'Move' tool to position them somewhere in the sky.

Then, apply the "Free Transform" tool (Edit -> Free Transform) to resize your fireworks photos until they seem to fit naturally into the perspective of your photograph.

two. Blending the Fireworks Into the Sky

Now that you have the fireworks in position, all that is left to practice is to blend them naturally into your base photo. But not all fireworks photos are created equal. The absolute easiest way to alloy photos is to utilize blending modes. These are institute in the top-left of the layers palette. If you take a photo with a totally black background, yous can probably get away this. Otherwise, yous might demand to use layer masks.

Endeavour changing the blending style for your firework layer. 'Screen' commonly works the all-time, as this mode keeps the lightest bits of your photo, and discards the darkest parts. In this case, that means the firework itself should show through, and the sky should be lost.

If this doesn't piece of work because you lot accept buildings or other objects in your fireworks photograph, then add a layer mask and try painting out the offending object with a big, soft brush, set to black. In this photo, at that place is a rocket trail that is showing in front of the waterfront buildings in my base layer. Using a layer mask, yous can pigment this out. If you are non familiar with layer masking, then take a look at this article.

In the below screenshot, the expanse that has been painted out in the layer mask is highlighted in red. By painting over this area of the layer mask with a black brush, this part of the rocket trail will no longer show through, and will therefore not appear in front of the buildings.

If I remove the base of operations layer for a moment, y'all can run across how much has been painted out.

three. Placing Fireworks Behind Buildings

You can add together more than fireworks by repeating the workflow in a higher place, but eventually it is likely that you will hitting a problem when you desire to position one half-behind a edifice.

Y'all could hand-draw a layer mask, equally you did it step 2, zooming into 100% and carefully cut out the building from the firework with a hard brush. But in that location is a much simpler method: the 'Quick Selection' tool.

First, ensure that your background layer is selected, and then paint this tool into the sky well-nigh whatever buildings or other objects. This will cause the tool to make a selection that snaps to any obvious boundaries in the photo, like the boundary between edifice and sky. So, with the selection made, you lot simply accept to select your firework layer and click the add together layer mask button. This automatically adds the selection as a layer mask, and the edifice volition get cut out from the firework.

4. Adding Reflections

So far it's looking pretty skillful, simply there's a trouble: no reflections in the h2o. This is a elementary problem to fix.

Start by duplicating your kickoff fireworks layer (Layer -> Duplicate Layer).

Then, with this duplicate selected, open the 'Free Transform' tool once once again (Edit -> Free Transform), right-click within the boundaries of the layer, and select Flip Vertical from the popup card.

Now, re-position this indistinguishable layer into the water, somewhere beneath the firework. You might want to stretch it a little to friction match the perspective of your photograph, or modify the positioning, then it looks more than natural. Hitting enter or the tick box on the tiptop bar to accept your transformation.

The final role left is to lucifer the texture and blur of the reflection to the water. If you zoom in to 100%, you lot tin encounter that the reflection evidently doesn't fit in.

To fox this, you tin get to Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur.

Making sure preview is checked, motion the radius within the Gaussian Blur filter until the reflection seems to naturally blend into the water, then hit ok.

Repeat this procedure with each firework layer in turn to add together all the reflections. If you lot have used layer masks, particularly to place the fireworks behind buildings or other objects, yous volition probably have to re-practise these. Simply it's easy enough to practise them again by paw, or through using the 'Quick Option' tool as in step 3.

Last Thoughts

With a few minutes of work, you can use these techniques to add together fireworks or whatever similar object to your photos.

Hopefully, this tutorial has given you some ideas of how y'all can combine blending modes, layer masks and filters to modify your photos. Of form, you don't have to use these techniques for blending fireworks, as there are many other potential applications. The use of agreement techniques like these, and how they combine, is that you then accept a greater repertoire of tips and tricks that y'all can employ to post-process your photos, in the time to come. The more techniques you lot understand, the more run a risk you lot have of creating photos that y'all are proud to exhibit. My teaching philosophy is based around giving yous these techniques, and showing you how to use them for your ain purposes. If y'all would similar to encounter more of my tutorials, y'all can observe them hither.

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This invitee mail was submitted by Tim Daniels. To encounter more of his work, please visit his website.

Source: https://photographylife.com/how-to-add-fireworks-to-empty-skies

Posted by: johnsonfrony1967.blogspot.com

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