1976 Stingray – Adding Lightning in Photoshop (tutorial)
This past weekend I got the pleasure of shooting Douglas’s beautiful 1976 Stingray – ’76 is the last year the Stingway was made. I threw together an HDRI and added some lightning with Photoshop. At first it was just for fun, but it turns out that many people actually enjoy the addition of the lightning. Several people have asked how it was done so I have thrown together a quick tutorial.
I used Photomatix to generate and tone map an HDRI using the above three images (albeit I used three RAW files exposed at -2 0 +2 rather than three jpegs). Below is the final product out of Photomatix.
I then threw the HDRI into Camera Raw in CS3 to make a few adjustments (exposure, clarity, vibrance, and saturation) to get the following.
Onto the lightning. I created a new file (make it as big/small as you need/want). Make sure black is in your foreground and white is in your background. Select the Linear Gradient tool. Start the gradient midway down/up and from about 1/4 from the left and end at 1/4 from the right. It should look like this when you’re done.
Go to Filters > Render > Difference Clouds. The black line should resemble lightning.
If you are not happy with the shape of your lighting, try re-doing your gradient. If you are happy, then go to Image > Adjustments > Invert. Now the lightning strike should be white.
Go to Image > Adjustments > Levels and set the black marker ~75% to the right. Now slide the gray marker toward the white marker until you are happy with the lightning strike. Here is mine.
Now simply copy and paste.
Make sure that your lightning layer is selected and set it to Screen. That will get rid of the black.
Press cntrl + t to rearrange the lightning to your liking.
Use the eraser tool at 50% opacity to blend the top and bottom of the lightning strike into the image.
Voila! You’re done! The lightning as I’ve done it is rather subtle. I didn’t want it to “steal” the picture. ;]
Be sure to check out my Gallery to view the rest of the photos from this shoot!
Thanks for reading!
PS – Photobucket must have compressed the images when I uploaded them. The dirt looks to be more burnt in some images. Anyway, not a big deal. Just thought I’d make a note of that. :]