Since I posted so many fireworks photos this last few weeks, I chosen one also for todays process post, to show you how it was edited. So this is of course one of the photo from the New Years fireworks. So here goes.

Finished photo

Original photo

This was of course an edit from a single RAW file. I started in Lightroom, where I first removed the perspective distortion, toned down the highlights and removed chromatic aberrations. From there I exported two version, one normal and one underexposed by one stop.

1st export

2nd export

I loaded the first export into Oloneo Photoengine, where by changing the strength and contrast, I created a base for my further edits. Then I loaded it, and the two Lightroom exports into Photoshop. There I did the following edits (layers numbered from bottom up).
1. Oloneo Photoengine result.
2. The brighter Lightroom export, to brighten the ship and the corners.
3. Darker Lightroom export to darken the center explosion.
4. Merged layer on which I removed dust spots and filled in the corners.
5. Color efex tonal contrast to add more contrast to the explosions.
6. Imagenomic noiseware to remove noise form the sky.
7. Added overall contrast.
8. Recovered the shadows a little from the Photoengine result.
9. Selective contrast to few more spots.
10. Small de-saturation of the red color.
11. The colors were still to strong here, so I used a copy of the Photoengine result, set to color and just softly brushed over few spots.
12. Brightened the center a little, as it looked too gray after the edits.

Oloneo edit

Photoshop edit

And that’s all I did with this image. To find out more on how I edit, check out the guides and before after categories on this blog, or check out my video tutorial series here: