Transform this seemingly dull photo and recreate your own version of a night sky.
Below is the image I took while waiting at an intersection in my sisters car.
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To begin, lets duplicate the ‘background’ layer & rename it to ‘starrynights’ as I have captured below.
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Switch to the ‘Channels Palette’ and duplicate the ‘Blue’ channel so that you now have ‘Blue Copy’ as I have captured below.
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With the ‘Blue Copy’ channel active, go ‘Image/Adjustments/Levels’ or (Ctrl + L / Mac: Command + L) and work the Highligts, Midtones and Dark point sliders until the majority of the background is white as I have captured below.
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Still in the Channels Palette, with the ‘Blue Copy’ active, click the ‘Load Channel As Selction’. (Encircled in red)
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Switch back to the ‘Layers Palette’, with the ‘starrynights’ layer active. Yoou should also see the active selection (marquee) that was loaded from the alpha channel, as captured below.
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Next, ‘Select/Inverse’ (or ‘Shift + Ctrl + I’ /Mac: “Shift + Command + I”) to inverse this selection.
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Next, add a Color Fill Layer of white below the ‘starrynights’ layer (encased in blue), hide the original ‘background’ layer (encircled in green), then hit the ‘Add Layer Mask’ icon. (encircled in red).
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You should now have the below resulting image with a layer mask attached to the ‘starrynights’ layer.
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Next, clean up what the levels command failed to do in the channels palette step earlier.
1. Ctrl + Click (Mac: Command + Click) on the ‘Layer Mask Thumbnail (encased in red) to edit the mask on the fly.
2. Select the Brush Tool (B) & Zoom in to a comfortable level, and for areas of gray shade paint with white (#ffffff).
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Clean up til your image is smooth (or reasonable) as I have captured.
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Add a ‘Black to Transparent’ adjustment layer between the ‘background copy’ & ‘Color Fill’ layers.
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Almost there!
Next, change the Blending Mode of ‘Gradient Fill 1’ to ‘Color Burn’ and add two Blending styles as I have captured below.
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Color Overlay: #1EA4F9
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Gradient Overlay: Black,White (#000000,#ffffff)
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Finally, with the ‘Gradient Fill1’ layer active.
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Go to ‘Layer/New/Layer’.
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At the next prompt select ‘Soft Light’ color mode and tick ‘Fill with 50% grey’. (encased in red)
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No affect has occurred to the actual document, but here is the layers palette view.
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With that ‘Layer 1’ active, go ‘Filter/Render/Lens Flare’ and with the below settings, position the flare to the upper left..
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Then change the Blend Mode of that ‘Layer 1’ to Color Burn.
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To get this resulting starry night image.
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Note: To eliminate some of the artifacts from the lens flare, activate that lens flare (‘Layer 1’) layer, Zoom in & draw a selection around the artifact portion.
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Then ‘Shift + F5’ & since that layer was originally created with a fill of 50% grey, choosethe same fill option here.
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For variations in color, alter the above ‘Gradient Overlay’ preset thats under the ‘Gradient Fill1’ layer.
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