Bi-Plane with Flare

2/4/23

    When I was searching for a starter image for a December PFCC Challenge, this cloudy sky jumped out at me. It was so cold feeling to look at that I began to shiver. Even now, I have to have the ceramic heater on under my desk so I can type.

    The sky is from Pixabay as is the airplane & fractal flare. The propeller is from PixelSquid. I started with the sky as my bottom layer. As with any image I use, I made it a smart object and ran it through the camera raw filter in Photoshop to do a color balance, add clarity, and a bit of detail. Next layer was the plane image. It took a while to mask out the original sky to let the clouds show through — thankfully most of the lines were straight.  I put the sun flare between the sky and plane with the blend mode set to screen to eliminate the black background.I aded a duplicate cloud layer over the plane and added a mask made from a duplicate of the red channel. This let the plane look like it was flying through the clouds instead of sicking out in front of them.

    I positioned the propeller straight on, and then used a spin blur from the blur gallery to make it seem as if it were moving. I did decrease the opacity a bit to make the propeller fit better in the scene. I finished off with a vignette. There are lots of ways to do this; I generally end up stamping a copy of all the layers, Making a rectangular selection with no feather, then going back to the select menu for modify > feather as it gives me more control. Then, I delete the center (I know, a  destructive modification and I usually avoid that), set the opacity to 30% and add a multiply blend mode. It makes it easier for me to make the vignette lighter or darker as needed.

    Take care, stay well and keep warm!