Enhance your paintings

USE SIMPLE TOOLS IN PHOTOSHOP TO BOOST YOUR PORTRAITS OR COMBINE SEVERAL FRAMES INTO ONE

Tweak colours 1

You might find afterwards that the images have a heavy colour cast. It’s best to shoot in Raw so you can change the white balance and other settings in post-production. You can also target and adjust the hue of individual colours using the Color Mixer panel in Camera Raw/lightroom.

Blend several frames 2

Light painting can be tricky to judge, so you might want to combine the best parts from several photos into one. This isn’t hard, as long as the frames are in alignment. Select an area, copy (Cmd/ctrl+c) and paste in place (Cmd/ Ctrl+shift+v). If you want just the light trails to show, set the blend mode to Lighten or Screen.

Increase Clarity 3

If the trails initially look like they’re a bit weak then you can try increasing Clarity in Camera Raw/lightroom. You can do this in the Basic panel, or grab the Adjustment Brush (K), load it with positive Clarity, then paint over parts of the picture to selectively boost the glowing light trails.