Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show you how to recreate the look of a classic, vintage UFO sighting photograph.
This is an update of a tutorial I did many years ago on an earlier version of Photoshop.
This update is more flexible and more streamlined.
I provided this vintage photo of a small, quiet rural town and a classic, retro-looking, flying saucer.
Their links are in my video's description below or in my project files.
Before we begin, if you're not already a subscriber to Blue Lightning TV, hit that small "Subscribe"
button at the lower right, to let you know as soon as I upload new Photoshop tutorials.
The first step is to angle the photo to give it a look like we grabbed the camera quickly
and had no time to frame it.
Open your Crop Tool and list of Crop presets.
Click "Original Ratio" and check "Delete Cropped Pixels", as well as, "Content-Aware".
Go to a corner.
For this particular photo, rotate it clockwise approximately this much
and click the check-mark at the top.
Content Aware does a great job filling in the white areas with the photo.
Click the tab of the flying saucer to open it and press "v" to open your Move Tool.
Drag it onto the tab of the photo and without releasing your mouse or pen, drag it down and release.
At this point, take note of the light source on the saucer, as well as the background photo.
Since the photo's light source is pretty much the same as the saucer, there's no need to
flip the saucer, however, if you're using a background that has a different angle of
light, feel free to flip the saucer in any direction.
To reposition, resize and angle the saucer, open your Transform Tool by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + T.
Drag it to a position you like.
To resize it, go to a corner and drag it in or out.
To angle it, go to a corner and rotate it.
Continue until you like its position, size and angle.
Then, press Enter or Return.
Next, we'll convert the saucer into a Smart object, so we can modify it non-destructively.
To do this, click the icon at the upper, right of the Layers panel and click, "Convert to Smart Object".
Go to Filter, Blur Gallery and "Path Blur".
Basically, Path Blur lets you create motion blurs along paths.
You'll see either a blue arrow or blue and red arrows depending on whether you have "Edit
Blur Shapes" checked.
For the purpose of this tutorial, check, ""Edit Blur Shapes".
Go to the dot on the left and press and hold Alt or Option as you drag the lines to the
left edge of the saucer.
Go to the dot to the right of the blue arrow and drag it up and over to approximately here
making sure the angle of the arrows are the same as the angle of the saucer.
Uncheck "Center Blur".
Doing this applies a more directed motion blur.
Drag this red arrow to approximately here to increase the end point motion blur and
drag the other red arrow to as close to the front as possible to minimize the motion blur
at the front of the saucer.
Then, click OK.
Next, we'll apply a Lens Flare over the bright sun reflection on the saucer.
It'll be easier to position it by first creating a composite snapshot of our visible image.
To do this press Alt + Ctrl + Shift + E on Windows or Option + Cmd + Shift + E on a Mac.
Go to Filter, Render and "Lens Flare".
Tick "50 -300mm Zoom" and drag the Brightness to the left to make the lens flare very small.
Drag it over the bright reflection on the saucer and for this image, let's type in 125%.
You can always adjust this amount later if you like.
Now that we positioned the lens flare, delete the composite snapshot by either dragging
it to the Trash or in later versions, by pressing the "Delete" key.
Make a new layer.
We'll fill it with black, but before we do, if you're foreground and background colors
aren't black and white, press "D" on your keyboard.
Since black is our foreground color, press Alt or Option + Delete.
Change its Blend Mode to "Screen".
Repeat the Lens Flare by pressing Alt + Ctrl + F on Windows or Option + Cmd + F on a Mac.
Photoshop places the same lens flare in the exact position as we had before and applies
the same settings, as well.
In case you're wondering why we deleted the composite snapshot with the lens flare embedded
in it, is because this way, we have each of the elements that comprise our image on separate
layers, so we have the ability to adjust any of them independently of the others.
We'll convert all the layers into one Smart Object by Shift-clicking the background to
all of them active and clicking "Convert to Smart Object".
Click the Adjustment Layer icon and click "Black & White".
This removes all the color from our image.
Next, we'll make it look like a classic, vintage UFO-sighting photo typical of the kind seen
from the 1930s through the 1950s.
Make the photo active and go to Filter and "Camera Raw Filter".
Click the "Effects" icon and make the Grain: 50, the Size: 100 and the Roughness: 70.
Under "Post Crop Vignetting", make the Amount: minus 25, the Midpoint: 80, the Roundness:
100 and the Feather 100.
Then, click OK.
Lastly, we'll give it a bit more grain.
Go to Filter and Filter Gallery.
Open the "Texture" folder and click "Grain".
Make the Grain Type: Clumped and the Intensity and the Contrast both: 50.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
Thanks for watching!