(speaking in foreign language)
- In this episode I'm gonna show you
how to add the Milky Way on your photos.
(dramatic music)
(speaking in foreign language)
My name is Serge Ramelli,
I'm a French photographer
from the amazing city of Paris, France.
And in this episode I'm gonna give you
a couple of Milky Ways
that you can put into your own photos
and take it to the next level.
It's very easy to do,
you can download them, the link is under the video.
Also don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel
by clicking the little subscribe button
and the little bell so you get a notification.
I'm playing the game of making two episodes per week,
every Tuesday and Friday morning at nine o'clock
Los Angeles time.
All right, let me show you
how you can add the Milky Way in your photos.
All right guys, so let's add the Milky Way in your photo.
First, where do you get the Milky Ways?
Let me show you.
Under the video all you have to do is click
the first link that's right under the video
and then you put in your email address.
You click on sign up for free.
and then you have to enter your name,
first name, last name,
create a password,
and boom it takes you in a library
and you can just click here view,
and then you can download the source files.
So, that was for my last video
but it's gonna be the same thing for this video.
And just a little note,
if you already have an account with me
what's gonna happen is this.
You click a link under the video.
This is my email, it's already in there.
Sign up for free and it's gonna say success
and it's just gonna add it to your library.
That's all you gotta do.
You gotta click sign up for free again
and it's gonna add this to your library.
All right so once you have the Milky Way install here,
let's start with the first example.
This is a photo I shot of in Joshua National Park
but there was no Milky Way,
the Milky Way was actually there but on the right side.
So I was like well maybe we can just add it.
So first I'm gonna be retouching this as the RAW file
and I'm actually gonna give you this RAW file
so you can play around with it,
you can even post it on social media
as long as you credit me as a photographer.
So this was just for your information,
I shot this with the Sony a7R I think a while ago
at 1600 ISO, f/4, 15 second, okay?
That was my settings
and usually when I retouch night sky
I really boost the whites a lot, I boost the clarity,
and I am going to add a lot of blue
and a little bit of magenta.
That's the look I like to go for,
some people like to go green nights.
I like a little bit on the blue side
and maybe boost the blacks to make it darker.
There's a lot of noise here but that's fine
that's why I'm gonna crush it with blacks.
I think my whites a little too much.
Voila, something like this.
Okay and I'm ready to go into Photoshop
and add the Milky Way.
So I'm gonna give you two files,
a couple of different Milky Ways that I shot
at different times of the year, different looks.
So, I'm gonna right click, edit
and open as a smart object in Photoshop.
Once you're into Photoshop
the way I add the Milky Way is
I use what's called the library
that I have on a different screen which I can show you here,
and that's all, I do a collection of skies.
So you see I have different groups like daylight,
sunset, Milky Way, golden hour, bad weather,
and I'll show you in another video
how you can organize that.
Because once you have that I can just take the,
like for example, this Milky Way I can drag and drop it
over my photo and it's already there as a smart object.
That's one way to do it,
the other way you can do it is basically
I can go back to Lightroom
and I can take that milky way and click edit.
Open in Adobe Photoshop CC,
edit with Lightroom adjustment and then go there
but having a collection of skies
ready to be a dragged and dropped is the best way to go
and I'll do a whole video on how to organize your libraries
especially with the new update that you can do groups,
I think it's amazing now.
And so, in case you don't have that
and you open it up as a different file,
that's fine, I can just take the move tool,
click and drag and drop it over the Milky Way.
And if for some reason you don't have this tab,
let's say like you got something like this,
it's kinda weird,
you can always go to Windows, Workspace.
No, sorry, Arrange, Consolidate All To Tabs,
and then you will have these tabbed things.
Okay, so now I have this over the Milky Way
and you see the colors don't match but that's fine,
remember this is a smart object.
The first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna position it.
So, I'm gonna go into edit
and I'm going to go into Free Transform, command + T, okay?
I want this one,
maybe I want it a little more crooked, okay.
And now if you have updated Photoshop,
the way that Control + T works which is the edit
is when if I move one of the sliders
it's gonna move completely proportionally.
And if I move the shift key I can move it
without respecting the ratio
and just stretch it if I want to.
So I might wanna,
actually you can and if you click outside
you can rotate it.
It's a really fun exercise to do.
I can make it bigger.
I think I wanna hold down the shift key here
so that I'm just stretching it here all the way for example.
And don't stretch it too much
so that the stars is not like a thinner circle.
Anyway, so I kind of like that but it's like
not really realistic so we're gonna use blending modes.
I'm gonna go to lighter color.
Now check lighter color is gonna do a good blend,
you can sometime go to screen
but it depends how dark,
but this, my Milky Way are not dark enough,
they're very bright.
So, you'll get a better result if you go to lighter color.
Okay, well lighter color is good
but we need to blend it so I'm gonna click
first enter to validate or transform.
I'm gonna click here to create a mask.
I'm gonna take B for brush
and black as a foreground color.
Make sure the hardness is at zero,
make sure you're at 100%.
And then hold down the control then alt key
to make your brush bigger or smaller
and I'm just gonna brush away this part
and like blend it.
Okay now my Milky Way is way too magenta
plus we need to make sure that we have a great mask here.
So the way to do that is you zoom in.
You take your brush, B for the brush, you make it small.
Okay I'll give you a good trick, you make it small.
You right click and you make the harness at 85%, okay
and then you click one time
and you hold down the shift key and you follow the rock.
And by doing that because you're at 85%,
if you really want to be precise usually I go
like a 300% of zoom but make sure you are
like 100% of zooming.
And you can, it's just you can use a quick select mask tool
but I like to do that, this is very dark.
I find it just takes a second
and it's kinda faster.
And this way I can make sure I don't have the Milky Way
on here and then you can just in the middle
I can just paint most of the issue was above.
We want a good mask so that it really feels that it's there.
Okay and you can zoom in even more,
press B lower, as you know I'm at 300%.
Z to zoom and you can make sure
and by keeping the shift key on
you can just click and go really fast you see.
And the fact that you're at 85%,
it gives a little feather that's gonna make it
just work perfect.
Okay, cool.
It's already looking kinda cool
but my background is too green
so I can double click on it.
It opens Camera Raw and I can just change the white balance,
add a lot more magenta, maybe warm it up a little bit more
so that it matches better.
Click OK.
And because it's a smart object we are good to go
and voila, the Milky Way before and after.
Pretty cool.
Let me show you a more crazy example.
I'm gonna go here and I'm gonna take this photo of Venice.
First I'm gonna retouch it a little bit
so I'm gonna open the shadows, boost the whites,
crush the blacks.
Wanna add some more magenta.
Maybe lower a bit the highlights.
I wanna make the sky even darker
'cause I wanna add the Milky Way there
so I'm gonna click and drag
and lower the exposure,
and maybe even the saturation.
And yeah, something to make it really dark there.
And then I wanna because I like it
I'm gonna make a circle, invert it, feather it.
I always like you do that I have
a circle of light here in the middle
so that the eyes of the viewer is attracted to the middle.
Okay, really cool photo,
one of my favorite photo of Venice.
All right, so now I'm gonna click here and click here,
not this one, this one same Milky Way.
Right click, edit open as layers in Photoshop.
So now we have the Milky Way which is at the bottom,
I'm gonna put it here on top.
So here is the Milky Way
or if you are like me and you love libraries,
you may have dragged and dropped it into your library
and you can just drag and drop it from there.
You don't have to open it from Lightroom.
So, we have it here, Command + T
and let's have some fun.
I think on this one I just want
a little bit of the hint of the Milky Way,
I don't want it to be so much in your face.
And how I got this idea of this one is look,
you see here there's a little star,
we could see one star was like,
oh, what if we could see the whole Milky Way?
So, this is, I'm just gonna go like this,
make it really big
and maybe just hold down the shift key too
so that it covers your entire photo,
the entire sky here.
And voila, press enter.
So remember my favorite blending mode on this one
is gonna be linear and you can see here,
if you press enter in real-time,
color dodge is not so bad on this one, color dodge.
I like linear color.
Lighten also works well.
It's gonna be in that section.
So either lighten or linear color,
I think I wanna go with this one.
Well, color dodge is not gonna be enough a view
so I'm gonna go with this one.
Create a mask, take a big brush,
big brush, make sure black is the foreground color,
make sure you're at 100%,
make sure you've got a big brush,
and that your hardness is at zero for this first operation
and that's just the biggest sort of
blending that we do here.
And when I did this, the first time I did this
and I'm gonna erase, oops, not too much.
What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna lower the opacity
like around 20 and I'm gonna erase, oops.
I'm not on a mask.
I'm gonna erase the top of the Milky Way
so just so that it's not so much in your face.
You're just blending it, you know?
Blending it, blending it, blending it.
Voila and I can even lower this, press X
and add a little bit of stars back here if I want to.
The first time I did this,
this photo went completely viral, it did really well,
it's funny, that's why I want to shoot you
and I'm gonna lower the opacity
so it's not like so much in your face.
You know, this is an impossible photo
because there's so much light pollution
that it would never happen
you could see the Milky Way like this in Venice
but who cares.
I'm here to create art,
I am not a photojournalistic,
I am a fine art artist and I do whatever I want.
All right, guys.
Download the Milky Way,
throw it into your night skies
and watch your Instagram explode.
All right, don't forget to like this video if you do like it
and to subscribe to my YouTube channel with the little bell
so you get a notification every time I make a video.
(speaks in foreign language)