How To Create Stunning HDR Moon Composite

okay as in today's video I'll show you two different methods for HDR moon image where you can see the illuminated side and the unalienated side in the same shot I'm also going to assume that you're a beginner in Photoshop because a lot of my patreon supporters and followers have been giving me feedback about how they're very new to photoshop and if I need a little bit confusing and daunting so I'm going to assume that you're a beginner so if the pace is a little bit slow view I apologize in advance but I've got these two photographs of the moon taken from a tripod so no tracking mount it was just an aesthetic tripod and if we look at the settings so it was ISO 6400 a focal length of eight hundred mil f11 one over five seconds you might want to make sure that the shutter speed is not long enough for the moon to move and blue and then the aperture if 9 f11 f13 is fine the longest focal length that you have available and then adjust the ISO to get the overall exposure and then the other image was exposed for the illuminated side of the moon so all the settings were the same apart from the shutter speed which was 1 over 800 seconds now before I take these images into Photoshop I'm just going to the corrections because I can already see that it's very blue so I'll use the wrong white balancing camera so I'm just gonna use auto white balance Lightroom is did a really good job there and also the highlights are a little bit bright we're gonna bring them back just a touch and that's too much and the other thing is when you zoom in you can see there's a big noise on the moon as well so you know there's a noise reduction in the detail tab and it's gonna lift that until the noise or smoothens out but I don't want to lose too much detail so somewhere about 20 is fine now I'm gonna take a note of the white balance here because I want to use the same white balance for the other image so it's four thousand nine hundred and fifty and zero so I'm just gonna change the white balance of this image so that it's the same and with this images we're all good with noise reduction so zooming in you can see a lot of noise and I think I'm gonna have to do a bit more of an aggressive noise reduction for this image so yeah just over 50 but it's gonna vary I can press G to go into the grid mode and I'm gonna select those two exposures right mouse click editing open has layers in Photoshop so don't select the edit in Photoshop 20/20 because they will open in separate documents you want to open as layers in Photoshop and then they'll open in the same document so as you see in the layers tab here on the bottom right I've got the two images in the same document and I've got the illuminated side on top of the exposure that's been exposed for the other illuminated side of the Moon so these are aligned let's toggle the visibility of that layer now I'm gonna be using something called layer masks I'm just gonna quickly explain or a layer mask is so in this example I've got a red image on top of a green image so it's basically like stacking sheets of paper on top of each other you got a green sheet on the bottom with a red sheet on top and I can't see the green layer because the red one is on top if I put the green one on top now I can see the green layer but I can't see the red layer you can use the eraser tool over here to erase some of that green layer and then I can see the red layer underneath but this is a destructive way I'm literally deleting those pixels and if further down the line I wanna bring those pixels back I can't because I've just got rid of them forever so I'm just gonna undo that by pressing ctrl + Z so what we can't do instead is use something called a layer mask which is this rectangle with a circle inside it and then clicking that you will see this white box here is basically what's called a layer mask and it's linked to this layer and what the layer mask does is it tells you what parts of this layer to show and if this layer mask is white it shows that layer if it's black it doesn't show that layer so if I take a brush make sure I've got black as my foreground color make sure you've got the layer mask as the active layer so I'm currently working on this layer and then that also deletes or it doesn't delete but it hides the green layer you can see my layer mask over here I chose the black brush that I just did and if i soften my brush by right mouse click and reducing hardness you get much softer brush I'm just gonna undo those too but what you can also do is get a gradient so this is the gradient tool like a black as my foreground white is my background color you could see up the top here it shows you a preview of what the gradient is gonna be like still working on my layer mask layer and like click and drag a gradient across and know the red and the green lays blend because the layer mask is a gradient so if I just press alt or option on a Mac and click on the layer mask you can see the layer mask so anything that's white shows anything that's black is hidden and then the Gray's in between is like setting the opacity and blending the opacity so that causes those two layers to fuse together blending together so with the moon now I want to make sure that they are aligned with each other so if I turn the opacity of the top layer off you can see that they're not really aligned so I'm gonna do is I'm gonna lower the opacity to about 50% and now I can kind of see when they line up so I'm gonna select the move tool you can press V I've got my top layer selected and I'm just gonna move that until I feel like it lines up nicely with the other moon and you can use the arrow keys now just to fine tune something what there looks good I'm just gonna turn the opacity all the way back up no instead of deleting this part of the moon bringing that move back I'm gonna use a layer mask in a gradient so first thing I need to do is create a layer mask onto this top layer and then with a gradient tool you can see at the top we'll get red and black for some reason so I'm just gonna change that to the basic black and white and though it's all about just finding a gradient that will blend them together nicely so that's not bad that's not bad somewhere about there I think looks pretty good now at this point if you want to help them blend together a little bit better you could change the brightness and contrast of each layer so if I do a brightness contrast adjustment layer and I've got two sliders here for brightness and contrast you'll see that this affects the entire moon because basically with Photoshop any adjustment layer affect the layers below it so if I put the brightness contrast here it's only gonna affect this layer here you see the illuminate it's like the moon stays fine so I might brighten just a little bit and put a bit of contrast but what if I want to do it just this layer only you can create a brightness contrast layer and then holding alt or option on a Mac when you put the mouse just between the two layers you'll see this white box and a little arrow and that basically links these two together it Clips them together you see this little arrow here so now this layer instead of effect in all the layers underneath it it only affects this layer which is being clipped to so I can increase the contrast of just that one side of the moon you can use those two to just adjust your blend and make the blend a little bit a little bit better but I'm quite happy with that now I want to select this moon and put it onto its only but at the moment the moon is kind of made up of two different layers so you recreate what's called a stamp visible layer well you do that by pressing ctrl shift alt and E if you're on a Mac its ctrl shift option and E and what that basically does is it takes everything that's visible in the document at the time and puts it into a new layer on top so basically takes everything that's visible and stamps it onto a new layer so I could turn the visibility of all of these layers off if I want and still see everything because it's all been stamped onto this new layer now only select this moon and cut it out onto its own layer without the black backdrop and to do that and we'll need a couple of guides and I'm gonna create these guides by clicking on the ruler here dragging this line on and just leaving it on the top edge of the moon there and that's created a new guide if you can't see this ruler just press ctrl + R or just come to view rulers but I'm gonna do the same from this side and drag it in onto the edge of the moon there now I'm gonna use the elliptical marquee tool and I'm gonna start where the lines intersect and that should get me a nice selection on the moon now with that selection active I'm gonna create a layer mask on this layer and what that does is it automatically adds a layer mask based on the selection that I just made so now I've got the moon on its own and we need a background layer and for the backdrop I'm going to use the image that was exposed for the an illuminated side of the moon which has the the glow on it which is the bottom layer here so I'm gonna turn the visibility of that layer back on and now you can see we brought back that natural glow of the moon but it's kind of sticking over the edge so I need to make that layer a bit smaller and hide the glow behind the moon so I'm gonna zoom out quickly I'm gonna select this bottom layer and make sure it's active and then press ctrl + T which is the free transform tool it's really useful one to learn and now I can resize this layer kind of hide it behind the moon I'm just gonna zoom in just to check it looks pretty good I think yeah looks pretty good somewhere what they will be fine and then you press this little tick at the top to confirm the resize and I'm gonna clear the guys by coming to view Taliah guides and then with a crop tool in these boxes at the top you couldn't do the ratio so because it's the moon and it's round I'm gonna do a a one by one crop ratio and I'm just gonna resize that send to the moon what about they'll be fine maybe that color is too bright so above that layer I can add a new brightness contrast just tone down the brightness of a glow so that it looks a little bit more natural something like that and that's basically it you can now do a little bit of editing if you want but for me I tend not to edit the moon that much because I find you start pushing pulling sliders and things get really horrible really quickly the moon is as beautiful as it is anyway so now this is a more purist approach I've seen a lot of other people who take the illuminate it's value of the moon and stick it onto a image of a full moon and that way you can get a lot more detail from the unlimited side of the Moon and then you can composite that on top of an image of the stars it's something that's beyond my morals this is about as far as I would go I much prefer to create my images from the same time the same location same position I don't like compositing the exposures from different places and different dates and times but I'm gonna show you anyway because I know a lot of people use this technique so coming back to Lightroom I've got this image here of a foolish moon it's not completely full but it will do for this tutorial and an image of the Stars which I took at 400 mil on the star tracker and then we're gonna take the two images that I just used as well so I'm going to take all of those images edit in open as layers in Photoshop okay I'm gonna name these layers just to avoid confusion so this is the glow layer this is the let's call it quarter moon this is the full moon and this is my star backdrop so you call that stars now I only really need the full moon and the quarter moon so you'll bring the quarter moon to the top I'm gonna turn the opacity of the other layers completely off I'm gonna hide them completely now I need to align the quarter moon with the full moon and the big issue with this is that the moon wobbles even though we only see the same face of the moon from if it does have a bit of a wobble to it so the quarter moon and the full moon images are not gonna line up perfectly and that's what I really don't like about this technique yes you might get lucky and it might have been sort of facing perfectly the same way as it was when you took your full moon photograph but as you'll see the moon has a slight wobble to it so we reduce the opacity of this layer and now I've got lined up this one with this one so you can see the Sea of Tranquility and the sea of serenity the dark patches on the moon the moiré and I'm just gonna get those to the same orientation first so that was the this is the free transform adjustment by pressing ctrl + T for transform a shortcut so easy to remember when you remember what they stand for ctrl + T for transform so we were trying it these two the same orientation that's pretty closer but you can see if I tell you passing it up just a little bit the sea of crises which is this dark patch here in the quarter moon image it's more around the edge if that makes sense because of the wobble of the moon this is facing us more directly this is more on the edge of the moon so you can see that they're not gonna line up perfectly unfortunately but we'll do our best to kind of just something like that will do and that looks pretty cool that splendid quite nicely I might meet the full moon a little bit darker by creating a brightness contrast holding alt option so I can link it to that layer and just bring the brightness down just a little bit there we go now then again I want to select this moon and cut it out so I'm going to create this stamp visible there by pressing ctrl shift alt and E or ctrl shift option and E and again I'm just gonna drag in some guides nice take the elliptical marquee tool starting from the guides we're gonna create a nice round selection around the moon being careful not to go over the edges and I'm just gonna create the layer mask so that I've now got that moon on its own next I'm gonna put that on the glow layer so I'm gonna bring the glow layer up underneath and just gonna move the glow layer abouts and so it's under the moon but obviously it's orientated the wrong way now something well they'll be good let me get a little bit smaller just what hides behind that moon a bit better and now I need the star layer and what I'm gonna do maybe I'm gonna crop this first because it's getting a little bit cocky I'm just gonna crop again one two one and to fix that column there I'm just gonna use the elliptical marquee selection select it and do edit content fill content away and that will just fill that empty space ctrl D to deselect now I'm gonna bring my star layer to the top turn the visibility on and what I want to do now is plane those stars on what I'm gonna do is change the layer blend mode to lighten and what that does is any dark pixels get hidden basically in any pixels that are lighter than the images underneath get stamped onto the image but what happens is those stars also go on top of the moons I'm sorry to create the layer mask take a black brush by pressing B for brush or you can press brush there make sure you've got black 100% opacity normal blend mode and I'm just gonna hide the stars that are in front of the moon because you can't have stars in front of the moon can you that would be a dead giveaway she wasn't obvious enough this was a composite and voila there is a HDR moon with stars as the backdrop using a full moon as the illuminated size so this is like crazy composite level really going against my morals here but I hope it was fun I hope you learned some things about Photoshop as well anyway thanks for tuning in guys if you have any questions get in the comments below and I'll do my best to answer them all if you're going out to enjoy the night sky anytime soon I wish you good luck in case guys

Channel: Alyn Wallace

Views: 192,421

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Id: kJo46Jik8j0

Length: 19min 49sec (1189 seconds)

Published: Sun May 10 2020