Challenge to Photoshop Users

[Mark Gowin]

I went to Elkmont to view the synchronous fireflies last night. It is an impressive natural phenomenon which only occurs (so they say) in Elkmont (Smoky Mountains National Park) and South East Asia. Naturally I attempted to photograph it. The darkness and dim light output of fireflies are just beyond the technical capabilities of the S2. (The better tool for firefly photography would be a Nikon D3S or Canon 5D MkII which are much better at high ISO long exposures.)

I am admitted Photoshop dummy. I can usually coax out what I want from an image using LightRoom only. However, there are times when more sophisticated approaches are needed. My firefly photos are a perfect example. I have attached 1 photo taken at dusk which shows the overall scene. I have also attached 8 photos of fireflies in action. I figure there is a way to overlay the firefly photos on top of the scene photo to get something close to what saw. I don't know how and plan to look up a Photoshop tutorial to figure it out. However, I thought it would be fun to post the images and create a challenge to see what RedDot Forum users can do with them.

The scene as I saw it was very dark and the trees were barely visible with fireflies everywhere lighting up in synchronicity. It was cool. I envision the final image to be darkish, but not as dark as in real life so the background scene is more visible. Also, I don't know whether it will look better with 1, 2, 3, or all of the firefly images overlaid. I am anxious to give it a try. In the mean time, I look forward to see where your vision goes with this and what y'all come up with.

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I know the images are far from perfect and have noise artifacts. I didn't spend much time in LR3 tweaking the images because I was anxious to export some jpgs to see if they could be combined into something worth looking at. There is a 5 image limit per post so I will include the remaining images in a subsequent post.

[Mark Gowin]

More firefly images

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One more to go - the dusk time view of the scene.

[Mark Gowin]

I can't upload the main scene at this time due to file size. I will try again later. Sorry for the delay.

[Mark Gowin]

Let's try this one.
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[Mark Gowin]

The firefly photos show some noise in the form of small white dots here and there.

[Josh Lehrer]

Mark:

Overlay each image over your original file and set the blending mode to "Lighten" in Photoshop. I did this with a few of the files just to show how it would work but you could certainly do it with as many of the firefly images as you like.

Good luck!

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[David Farkas]

Mark,

I was on the same wavelength as Josh apparently. I also used Lighten for my blending mode, but added some curves adjustments with clipping paths. This applies the curves layer to only the layer immediately below it. So, I boosted the brightness of the firefly images a bit and brought down the background image to make it look more like dusk. I also used three firefly images on top of the background image, but all could be used if you want to take the time (and RAM) to pull them all in.

David

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[Mark Gowin]

Josh and David, thank you for showing me what is possible. I am embarrassed to admit it but truth be told I have purchased three previous Photoshop versions (CS2, CS3, and CS4) with every intention of learning how to use it each time I purchased it. It's funny that it took me three well intentioned tries before I figured out not to buy CS5.

I seemed to never find the time to learn Photoshop and the flexibility of LightRoom made my need for Photoshop a much lower priority. However, here is a good example where Photoshop can save an image. Also, I have no ethical problem with combining these images because the end result will be very close to what I saw and I am just overcoming limitations of the camera.

[David Farkas]

Josh and David, thank you for showing me what is possible. I am embarrassed to admit it but truth be told I have purchased three previous Photoshop versions (CS2, CS3, and CS4) with every intention of learning how to use it each time I purchased it. It's funny that it took me three well intentioned tries before I figured out not to buy CS5.

I seemed to never find the time to learn Photoshop and the flexibility of LightRoom made my need for Photoshop a much lower priority. However, here is a good example where Photoshop can save an image. Also, I have no ethical problem with combining these images because the end result will be very close to what I saw and I am just overcoming limitations of the camera.

Mark,

No problem. Actually, I realized that anyone else looking at these image might not want to download the whole 37.5MP image, so I'm attaching a 1500x1000 composite to this post.

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Regarding PS upgrades, I am still using CS4 on my personal machine. We have CS5 at work, but composites like this can be done just as easily in CS2.

Oh, and here is a screen grab of my layers pallet, so you can try yourself.

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David

[Jack MacD]

Mark,
Learning a new software is difficult, Photoshop more so.

I was taught PS 3.0 in 1996 or so. I was taught by a designer in 30 minute sessions. I would merely ask how to do one thing I needed at a time. David has now taught you one thing you needed.
To try and learn the whole thing at once is like saying you need to learn Japanese in total to learn how to just say thank you. Not required. I encourage you to try one thing at a time.

While I know Photoshop, I use 10% of the capabilities. And there are always six different ways to do the same thing. Learning Lightroom was more difficult for me because I was on my own and trying to learn the whole thing at once. I bought a video lesson which helped. Now I do most of my work in Lightroom. Another photographer claimed Lightroom was like going to the clinic for a fever, and Photoshop was a surgery hospital. Good analogy.

I would suggest S2 users here post an occasional example of how they use Lightroom or Photoshop to solve a single problem and we will all learn a lot. David's example was new to me and very useful. I now can shoot in a way that I can preplan using that technique that I might not have ever attempted.