Rainbow and Fake Lightning

[drg]

It the time of year when I've got time to play a bit. This is a new (for me) lightning creation technique. As easy as this one was, I may never trust lightning shots again.
What do you think of the first attempt?

[gahspidy]

I think the effect looks pretty good. i am not sure about the glow around the lightning, it seems artificial. Maybe leave it around some areas and eliminate it from others. I would also like to see one of the strikes landing to the ground. Good first attempt.

[mjs1973]

I think it looks pretty good, other than the glow that Gary mentioned. I would love to know how you created the lightning.

[Overbeyond]

There's a nice bit of atmosphere on this one and I like the leaning pylon and the light on the field below. The thing I dont like about it is the lightning itself; it looks a bit cut and paste.
But the picture will survive really well without it because the rainbows, pylon and ground lighting create a good mood.
Tom

[drg]

So you say you want White Lightning and Ground Strikes. We can do that.

Oh and the original is a little more blurred so it isn't as pixelated hopefully. May a bit less cut and paste looking?

[LeeIs]

Good one. Realistic too. Also when the new bolt starts a fire some where, we'll all know who started it.

[GB1]

I might have not known if you hadn't told me it was fake. The second lightning is better than the center one. Nice colors on the sky btw.

GB

[gahspidy]

the second take is much better. i dig the lightning strike as well, very convincing.

[Lava Lamp]

It the time of year when I've got time to play a bit. This is a new (for me) lightning creation technique. As easy as this one was, I may never trust lightning shots again.
What do you think of the first attempt?

Having read y9our description, it looks fake, but I don't know that I would have noticed if you didn't tell me. One thing about lighting pics is that they are a good bit darker, else you can't see it, right?

[ken1953]

My only concerns here is that there are 3 types of lightning...Sky lightning, that runs across the clouds, and earth to sky or sky to earth lightning - which are basically the same thing just opposite directions. The type of lightning you are trying to portray in the first one appears to be the latter. The only problem is...you don't touch the earth. In the second one, you have portrayed a very nice "near strike" where you can see the lightning strike the earth and this is a great effect. But even with distant strikes where you don't see the actual hit, you should still be able to see it "touch" or at least disappear behind another object. Just remember, lightning has to end on the ground or dissipate into another oppositely charged cloud. Just some thoughts for you to consider while learning this new concept.
Ken

[drg]

Ken,

Thanks for the comments. I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to say exactly, the first image is obviouslly lightning in the sky, and it is color enhanced for reasons I'll mention in describing how this works. The second image is the first image minus the color i.e. "White Lightining" plus the 'striking' bolt. If you look in the lower right hand corner you'll notice that the bolt disappears behind the building (part of the technique) as well as it is 'behind' the tower. The ground flash is appropriately shielded by the roof line of the building as well.

I'm very familiar with the concept of lightning, learned to get under cover when the real stuff happens years ago! This is just a relatively easy way to produce an effect. The first image literally was the first attempt with the method described (next response) and I was not at all displeased for the 5 minutes or so it took!

-C

[drg]

Thanks for the comments everyone!

Now, how does this work and why did I play with this one?

I should start with that there have been some VERY interesting posts here (and some other sites) of images that were eventually revealed as fake lightining. Some were obvious and other were not. I've also viewed some images lately that I can tell by close examination had all kinds of very subtle editing marks and the 'light' angle wasn't quite right but they were being passed off as 'real'. I'm not going to point fingers unless I can personally come close to duplicating or suggesting how they were done.

The week before Thanksgiving I watched a graphic art student draw a landscape from scratch. Clouds, grass, skyline, rolling hills, sun and sun dogs, shadows, wind blown trees, some birds, you get the idea. It was as good as any photo. I believe she used a wire frame library for the birds. The rest was all done with technique.About 4-5 hours works. Still hoping she might consent to let me post a copy or she'll do it somewhere and I can point to it.

I asked how she'd do lightning among other things if that came up. Her suggestion (including some reference books to the type of technique) boiled down to this:

[WARNING: You may wind up with a 50-100 Mb file in the PSD format doing this from a 2.5Mb start file.]

In P/S (this should work in various versions) take the photo in question and:

1. Duplicate the image in a layer. (to be able to adjust contrast if needed for comparison)
2. Create a layer labeled Lightning.
3. Select the Lightning layer and draw a selection rectangle about where you want to place the lightning.
4. Using the default Black to White Gradient, draw a gradient pattern at about 45degrees in the rectangle.
5. Select and apply the Difference Cloud Filter to the Gradient.
6. Invert the result.
7. Open your Layers adjustment dialog and push/slide all the arrows to the right. In other words, take the Black (not the Output) adjustment from the left and just keep sliding it to the right until the rectangle contains a nicely squiggly line from one corner to the other. This is your beginning Bolt. You can play with the angle of the bolt when drawing it, but remember it can be rotated at any time!
8. Change the Lightning layer blending mode to Screen to just have bolt. At this point the rectangular selection should have a white bolt superimposed over the photo about where you wish to add it.

Now the technique becomes a matter of taste and finesse. You can create a color/glow/flash Layer, add color (which is what I did in the first one) which a lot of lightning displays naturally in photos, You can add cloud ground flashes by:

9. Create a layer filled with black.
10. The create a circle filled with white and a featherd edge.
10b. Or you can use a Lighting effect/filter such a single point light or a flare.
10(more) The goal is to get a circle or oval type shape filled with white/light that doesn't have a sharp edge.
11. Then blend the 'flash' layer as a Linear Dodge using the slider to reduce Opacity until you are left with the flash effect you want.
12. Position the flash at the top and/or bottom of the bolt.

At this point you'll have a single bolt with or without color and a 'start/stop' point for cloud to ground lightning.

To get the branches in the bolt (and this is the 'trick' I suppose)
13. Return to the Lightning layer and create a new layer via duplication. Then you have the same bolt that can be rotated, scaled, warped, partially erased etc. As you scale it, the bolt will become finer and look more like the feathery 'ends' of cloud-to-cloud lighting. Position as necessary. I didn't spend a lot of time to get the ones like that in the image. In fact this description I think is taking longer than it did to do either one of the bolts! Repeat as often as desired for more branches.

The only other fine touches are, as was suggested, to vary the colorations and or glow (which is just another layer of fill behind the finished bolts that traces their outline and is colored, blurred, etc.)

My biggest issue has always been how to create bolts that have some randomness. The difference cloud and inversion technique seem the simplest I've used that was not a complete filter itself. If you really want to get fancy; edit your own Gradient to produce different amounts of 'jaggies' in the basic lightning bolt. You may even want to smudge or blur the bolt so it doesn't look quite so pixelated as the first of these does (by intent to highlight what can happen).

Be VERY cautions of Combing Layers (Control-E). You may want to return to some layer to tweak it (I did obviously) and if you have to undo to get the layer 'back' some other adjustment may get hammered. Do combine the separate lightning bolts together when finished duplicating and pasting and scaling and rotating etc., it makes the other adjustments uniform and easier.

Good luck and I'll try to answer question if I haven't confused you totally. The Technique is really quick was you start. This has take twice as long to write as to do it.