JimFox
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| p.3 #1 · p.3 #1 · Waking up with the gods... (Orig Images on 3rd page) | |
Mr Grimm wrote:
Fantastic shot Jim. Really like the composition, and especially the fact that you took the time to determine the most attractive/dramatic angle of the rock to photograph it from.
Is there any way you could post the 2 original files with your finger in the shot, as well as the sunstar by itself (or small crops of each)? Ive been trying my hand at doing this but I find I can never quite paint the sunstar back in without bringing an orange tint/cast with it in the surrounding the area. It seems you have this same problem, but you have controled it a lot better and it is hardly noticeable. Would this be avoided if I painted a lot more precisely over the star area?...Show more →
Thanks so much for the kind words. I am glad that you liked the shot.
Now, as to dealing with the sun star and flares and color casting that can happen. I agree, that one of the major issues can be that color cast that gets spread out from the sun. Sometimes it's worse then others. Typically I think one does want some of that color cast right around the sun, but not where it spreads out too far into the image.
With this image I had a brain storm, and made one simple change in how I processed the shot, and I am thinking it may be really cool. Now probably a bunch of people have already come to this solution, but here is how I had been processing the shots where I stick my finger over the sun on one of the frames.
I would have the layer with the finger over the sun on the bottom, and then the shot with the sun star on top. I would use a layer mask on the top layer to paint out any flares and such. But while I have produced some really cool shots that way, sometimes it was hard, with color casting in too much of the image being a big issue.
So to solve that, my brain storm (I know many of you don't want me to be hurting my brain too much) was I switched the order of the layers. For the bottom layer, I placed the sunstar shot, and for the top layer I placed the image with my finger covering the sun. I did that because it hit me finally that the image with my finger over the sun, other then the obvious finger in the shot, it was the best overall shot as there is no color casting or flares etc in the image. So my thought was to use the Finger shot as the basis for the shot, and then with a layer mask I painted on top of the my finger to let the sunstar then show through. It was very simple in the end. Otherwise I would have been painting in say a dozen spots on the image, but this way I only had to paint in over my finger and the shot was basically done! Easy Peasy! 
Now usually I will poke my finger in from the top of the frame vertically, having my finger go down until it covered the sun. And I took a few shots that way, but I fortunately realized that if I instead brought my finger in from the side, my finger wouldn't be disturbing the clouds as much, and the movement of the clouds between shots concerned me as the clouds were moving fast.
So here are the two shots simply downsized from the ACR conversion. The first being the top layer with my finger in the shot, and #2 being the sunstar shot. Which again, I used a simple layer mask, painted over my finger to let the sunstar show through from the bottom image, and bango I was done!
Any questions, please ask.
Jim
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