Cherry Moon

Lorraine from Gatineau, Canada

Wow i adore the translucent pink...gorgeous :)

24 Apr 2008 9:40am

Viewfinder from Bradenton, United States

An interesting composition Betsy. It's kind of spooky without being scary. I wish I knew more about shooting night skies; or processing stars out of hiding.

24 Apr 2008 11:18am

Russ from New Hanover, PA, United States

Nice accents with the LED flashlight. That tree is gorgeous!

To enhance the stars, try this: create a new layer and try selecting just the sky with the magic wand tool. Make sure the "add to selection" box is active (second box from the left and directly under the Printer icon in PS Elements for WinXP...might be different on a Mac) so that you can click on different parts of the sky and it will keep adding to the area that you select. This can be tricky when selecting the sky when there are tree branches involved because you have to make sure you get all the parts of the sky between the branches. You will have to play around with the "Tolerance" amount which dictates which pixels and how many are selected based on their tone/brightness values. The magic wand tool will select all the pixels that are similar in tone and brightness depending on the amount of tolerance that you define. Keep clicking on the sky until all the portions that you want are selected. Once the sky is selected, choose Select>Feather and try entering 3 in the no. of pixels. This will make whatever adjustments you make to your selection (in this case, the sky) more gradational at the edges so your adjustments won't be as abrupt and obvious between the selected area and the non-selected areas. After that, play around with the contrast until the sky is darker but the stars show up a little brighter. I can't remember if PS Elements has a curves function to do this or not, but I know it has a levels function and a brightness/contrast function. You may have a newer version of PSE than I have that has more features. Let me know if this works. Good luck!

24 Apr 2008 2:28pm

Craig from Vacaville, California, United States

A wonderfully successful experiment! To boost the stars in PS, increase magnification to 500%. Then paint the center pixel of each star white. It is likely that when you reduced the size of your photo to an up-loadable size, the pixels of each star were compromised (color-wise).

24 Apr 2008 2:32pm

Michael Rawluk from Prince George, Canada

It is always so much fun to experiment. Very nice shot.

24 Apr 2008 11:38pm

amy from Rocky Mountain House, Canada

Really cool experiment!! Nicely done! No advice, tho'. But I am totally gobsmacked by that incredible tree!

25 Apr 2008 12:25am

Jen from Alpharetta, United States

AWESOME and I love love love love the light and that tree is incredible!

25 Apr 2008 1:58am

Anita from West Nottingham, United States

I can't see you moving about.

25 Apr 2008 8:07pm

Sandrine from Cincinnati, United States

Great shot! I'll have to try that sometimes...

27 Apr 2008 9:01pm

drphoto from Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

Wonderful effect this painting with light has greated =D)

Dan

6 May 2008 12:23am