Photoshop A Lovely Starry Night Sky
Have you ever seen an awesome landscape scene at night, only to notice that the sky is just a boring black abyss? It seems like everytime I shoot landscapes at night that there's never anything of interest happening in the skies. Not only that, but if its an urban landscape, you'll never see any kind of stars whatsoever due to the light pollution from the city lights. One of the coolest things you can see in the night sky is the Milky Way galaxy. Taking a shot with the Milky Way in it requires a lot of planning and knowledge of how to get it right. Sometimes it's not even going to be possible to get a nice view of the galaxy based on the position of the subjects in the scene.
That all aside, I made a tutorial on how you can create your own starry night sky when the conditions aren't working out in your favor. Now of course it will look much more realistic to get the actual Milky Way in camera, but this tutorial is more about stars as opposed to the Milky Way. Although, you can certainly add in a galaxy if you'd like (In fact, I did just that for the one photo). In the video (below) I start out by taking you through the process of how to mask out the sky and blend in a photo of a galaxy with stars to create an awesome looking scene with a lit up pagoda over looking a city. The star/galaxy photos I'm using in this tutorial are actually public domain NASA photos which you can find in a variety of places on the internet. Since these photos are taken by a government agency, the photos are free to use, even if you wanted to print them out and hang them on your wall ;).
In the second part of the video I take another night time city scene (and another star photo) and once again mask out the sky to add in some stars. This time though, I also show you how you can remove clouds from your night sky that you otherwise might want to remove from the scene. I also describe how to add an effective reflection to the river below the city to properly mirror the new starry night sky that was just added in. The video is a bit long, but I hope you enjoy it and it helps teach you how you can add that little extra 'something' to your night sky and make it that much cooler looking. If you've got any questions, I'm here to help! Leave a comment below here or on the video and I'll do my best to answer ^_^. Also, if you've got an awesome night time landscape that you'd like to share with the world, go ahead and leave that in the comments below too. I love seeing how other people approach the same situation. Really though, I love seeing great art. So spread the love!
