Patrick Comtois's profile

Grand Haven Lighthouse

After getting a few emails on how I arrived at the final image, I decided to post a small tutorial on how to get the light in the light house.  This is the original image right out of the Nikon D4s during mid day.
I wanted a lok of night time so I use a cuvres adjusement to darken the picture to give the appearence of evening. After that I went to Filters>Render. Lens Flare.  I chose about 35% brightness and the 105mm prime for the flare.
Afte creating the lens flare on the above picture (not shown) I needed the flare to reside on its own layer to have control of it.  I created a new layer and filled it wtih 50% gray   Using a soft edged brush at 100% opacity, I erased the orbs I did not want to get what you see below
After getting rid of the orbs, you have just flare.  I then changed the blend mode to Hard Light to reveal the flare in the picture and positioned it where I wanted it on the light house.
Here is the finished copy of the light house at night. Easy to do.  I hope this helps!
Kind of wanted to take this a bit further, so I added the beam  shining off into the distance.  I used a my brush and set the blend mode to soft light to extend it out.  Set you opacity to whatever you deem appropriate.  I added a layer mask and brushed out the parts of the light that I did not want to get my final look.  Pretty easy!
 
Grand Haven Lighthouse
Published:

Grand Haven Lighthouse

Brief tutorial on how I added the light to the Grand Haven lighthouse.

Published: