Photoshop - Fifth Self-taught tutorial

Adding Fireworks To An Image

After researching and looking into ideas for my back cover I have decided to experiment with adding fireworks to an image of the Eiffel Tower which I already really like. This image was not 100% right for my front cover but I don’t want to waste the high quality image and hence I intend on using effects to make it look like an evening scene and then add fireworks to the background. In order to achieve this I have found a tutorial which adds fireworks to images. The link for this tutorial is: http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/fireworks/

What did I do?

Ideally this tutorial required you to use an image which was taken at night to give the perfect effect but seen as I wanted to use my already sourced image I used a couple of effects to quickly darken my image. As you can see from my original Eiffel Tower image and my finished image this darkening technique isn’t perfect or ideal. The red in the sky of this image makes it very difficult create a night effect and this unfortunately means I would need to source another image when creating this for my final piece. I did however use the Hue/Saturation tool and the Brightness/Contrast tool.

 

 

 

Sourced: http://www.anderson-tours.co.uk/top-10-things-to-do-in-paris/ - Accessed 06/02/2014

 

 

Sourced: http://atkinsondavid.co.uk/fireworks/ - Accessed 21/02/2014

 

Next I added the fireworks, I opened these in a separate workspace and then selected the fireworks image and dragged it over to the workspace which had my Eiffel Tower image. This created a new layer for my fireworks. I then used the Move tool to move and resize the fireworks image to where I wanted them. Once I had done this I simply added a layer mask, this removed the black background of my fireworks image. A thumbnail then appeared in my layer box and I simply changed my blend mode to screen. I clicked on this thumbnail and then selected the brush tool. I wanted to remove the fireworks which sat in front of the Eiffel Tower. To achieve this I simply set the colour of my brush tool to black and painted over the area where I no longer wanted to see the fireworks.  

The tutorial went on to duplicate the layer and then change the opacity however I didn’t like this effect and left my fireworks as they were. Below shows my overall image.

 

 

My results and evaluation:

I feel that the overall concept of this newly transformed image is really good however the background image I used is evidently not suitable. I also liked the idea of using the heart shaped fireworks however I also feel this could be improved my using a normal firework display image and hence going forward I would also change this. I feel the technique used was simple yet effective and gives off a professional finish.