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Post-Processing Long Exposures on the Beach

Lesson 8 from: Mastering Long Exposure Photography

Matt Kloskowski

Post-Processing Long Exposures on the Beach

Lesson 8 from: Mastering Long Exposure Photography

Matt Kloskowski

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Lesson Info

8. Post-Processing Long Exposures on the Beach

Lesson Info

Post-Processing Long Exposures on the Beach

let's talk a little bit about about some post processing just run through. Ah, wavy shot. I know we did this yesterday, So this is kind of the review for you, but at the same time, anybody that's new tuning in today you'll see you see. But here was an interesting, interesting location. So waves crashing, same type of thing, you know, Not super long exposure. Just a couple of seconds long enough to get some of that water that's moving on along here. So this is a wall that's right here. If you can imagine like, you would not wish I put the video on my laptop, you would not believe the size of the waves coming over this thing. And I'm standing there and I stood there long enough to know they weren't gonna hit me cause I could duck behind the wall. But it's intimidating because it is a huge, monstrous wave coming right at you that crashes and gives you all these cool little waterfalls and you ducked behind the wall. You're fine, but it's it's like it's big. Um, anyway, so what we'll do her...

e is we'll do some will do some basic editing and we're gonna have a little little fun with it. Um, let's go jump in. Probably hit it, Make it a little bit warmer, A bit brighter. Uh, and all the all the presets are doing if you're just tuning in, just moving some of the sliders over here so later Shadows normal toning. That looks pretty good. Let's try. I always have to try HDR just because But we'll go back. Oh, see here. So a little bit of clarity and contrast now, I don't want to soften it, and we'll take it off. It's got it gets good enough. Not too much. I don't want to boost the saturation too much in this one. So I'm not really gonna mess with any of the colors and will hit a little bit of lens correction. And we'll save the vignette for the end cause we're gonna do some some other stuff for this one. So I basically gone through and edited kind of tweak this the to the way that I want To me, the sky was kind of blocked, lost all color kind of just got So we're gonna use this opportunity. You might even recall this cloud texture from yesterday. This is my favorite cloud texture. We're gonna use that. Yeah. So you go to my home and all my photos on the wall. They all have the same clouds. There's a photo taken in Dubai. Theres a photo in Hawaii. There's a photo in Washington. They all have the same clouds in it. I just use the same. Um, but we're going toe. We're gonna have a little fun with this one because it falls into it, falls into a good category of you can see where the sun is. You can see it's a pretty warm type of the sky and you can see appear we've got son in a pretty warm type of the sky. So let's ah, let's select both of these photos Here. Go Photo edit in will open as layers inside of foot shop. I had somebody and somebody asked me this at lunch, so I'm gonna go through a different way. I know that a lot of people also use on one. So I've been going through photo shop. You've watched me go through Photoshopped. I'm going through photo shop because I figure a lot of people have the light room Photoshopped combo. I'll take this one through on one, just to show you that you can do something very, very similar to so plug in extras under the file menu. And then there's an option to goingto layers so on. One has a has a lettering plug in, and I mention this because I worked there. But there's also an option down at the bottom toe, open as layers inside of perfect layers so it will do the same thing that photo shop would do, right? It's gonna bring us inside of there. It's going to stack each other or stack each one on top of each other. We got a couple comments about people having trouble installing presets or this software on Matt site at the bottom of your scroll down, there's informational videos you hit support on. There's informational videos that Matt made that. Just explain all of that. So if you're wondering how to do any of that and you did by the course and you got the presets or you're working with this on one stuff, that's where you get what you need, and I'll throw something onto that. I've been creating presets for for years I can tell you because there's develop module presets. There's brush presets. There's graduated filter presets. There's print presets, I can tell you that. I've been putting free presets on my website for 89 years. Um, no matter how many times I right, when when you put like the print presets, no matter how many times in the post I write, do not install these in the develop module. Do not install these in the development. Do not install these and the develop module. The very first comment on the block post will be I tried installing the print presets and I got wrong type of preset error. It's because you tried to install it in the developed because we're so used to the develop module presets. So if just in general, if you ever get wrong type of preset error, it just means you tried that preset is not meant for that module. So I laid it out on my support page pretty quickly thes presets or in the develop module, these presets going brushes. These presets go in print. Um, so but just keep that in the back. Your mind If you ever see the error, all right. So let's go ahead. And we got our We've got our sky over here. Not that one. I undid. Hold on. Redo. So we got our sky here. So the way it works is very similar to photo shop. You got layers, layers on top of each other. I can re stack and I can switch those layers. Cancel on. I can adjust and move everything up and down. You got layers so kind of merge that into place there. And you've also got a lot of masking and other tools over here. So I can kind of bring that down a little bit, actually going to do the same thing we did in photo shop, which is make that a little bit bigger. It apply, and then you've got masking brushes here, so just remember, like we added, basks inside a photo shop, I click the masking brush. And luckily, this selection is much easier than what we had been Photoshopped yesterday. I could take my masking brush and kind of just Babe, I don't want to fade that much. My campaign I'm not going to do this because it was actually looking pretty good before I can paint it right along the ads all fade just a little bit so I can fade that in, um, notice it creates ah, little layer mask for you right over here. So you don't even have to go create a layer mask for and then it's got opacity, which, as it goes up there, it's going to start fading in. Now. This is a good one, because yesterday the example we dropped in on was a clear sky. So this is a good example of, you know, if we wanted to fade it, we're going to start revealing that clouds those clouds in that sky there behind. So we have to We have to be careful. We tried to fade it, but I wanted to show you that you can at least get something very similar to layering your skies and clouds on top of each other. This is a good example that, um I'm probably gonna want Teoh go in here and use news, photo shopping and some levels and things. But I want to show you this that we can We can layer everything inside of there as well. But back over here. So one of the other things that Indu is. When I have this texture, part of my post processing for it is I'll go apply a little bit of that. Grady effect. All right, so I got the adjustment brush in the precent, but it's just clarity, okay? Just clarity and a little bit of, ah, tweak in temperature. But I'll apply that gritty effect to the water cause what it will do is it will enhance the temperature or not. The temperature will enhance the texture a little bit. Now. I don't want it cool, so move it a little bit warmer. But you see how it takes a lot of those little cascading type of textures that we have. So that's before, and that's after. And of course, you can tweak it kind of bring it down a little bit, but that'll kind of increase that streak in this a little bit and kind of just add to the texture. Just helps it stand out a little bit more to me. Also, just since I'm here, go new. And so we should ago Sharper tacks sharp. Do you want it to sharper? Do you want it really sharp? We'll go tax shark God I was gonna paint it right on the rocks there because that's right up front. Okay, so let's go take this and this one photo edit in open as layers in photo shop. Same thing that we did before. It's just going to drop both images on top of each other and Photoshopped and probably not tell us when it does. As we saw earlier today, it just leaves you in light room and let's just move that up a little bit. This is an easy selection. I probably don't even need the power of the quick selection tool. I could use the rectangular Marquis if I wanted to, but we use the quick selection tool. So I got my selection. Remember, I got that cloud texture over here. In fact, let's right back over here. So I got my selection active, by the way, just because you see it happened to me a lot, and I'll get the question a lot if you use this tool on a layer and it doesn't seem to be selecting what you think it should select. Do you know why that happens? Because I have the other layer selected, so it's actually selecting based on that layer, even though you don't see it, it's selecting. Based on that layer, you got a click on the layer that you want to make the selection from, because otherwise it will use the stuff from the other layer. So we'll go ahead. Turn that layer on. First off, all we got to do is add a layer mask. Remember, when we add a layer mask to a selection, it just keeps what selected? So it's kept the clouds inside that area. Um, we want to move the clouds. So you probably remember if I do that, it's actually moving the mask with it, which is not what we want. So there's a little link icon right in between there. So we want to do is turn that link off. And now, Now we can go in here and move clouds wherever we want. End free transform. By the way, it's edit free transform again. I'm just going for the warmer colors. Don't leave it there, all right. And, uh, we can crop it. We're losing a little bit over here, So there we are. What I would say to this is that I can't reduce the opacity because I have clouds behind it. We saw that. That won't work. But what I could do is going toe levels, Commander Control. L and I mention this yesterday. Whenever I'm laying something on top of another, I used levels to kind of try to tweak it. You can make it brighter. Could dark in it. You can make it a little dollar. Eso Aiken usually use that middle slider and help paid that in a little bit. Okay, I'm done. Filter our file save. Don't save as Don't change the location. Nothing like that. Jump back over to light room and there is our newly replaced sky layered photo. So, I mean, at the end of that list, we've got a little color back in there. Okay? At least might look like the same photo yesterday, so you might want to not wanna hang them up in the same place in your home. Got the clouds Look exactly like your photo downstairs. But at least we got a little bit of a little bit of color in the clouds back up in this guy instead of just the block gray clouds that they were before. But we've kept pretty true to the overall color of the sky. Even though we brought in a little blue over here, at least the sun was in the same spot on. And then I finish it up. We can go to our been yet kind of tweak it a little bit of a vignette there. Okay, so there is our our final finished Beach beach wavy type of a photo.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Lightroom Presets.zip
Long Exposure Gear Guide.pdf
CreativeLive Sky Pack.zip
Long Exposure Cheat Sheet.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

Photoracer
 

I always enjoy the opportunity to learn something new from one of my favorite teachers, and Matt rarely disappoints. The material that he covers in this class on long exposures will give the viewers enough tools and techniques to get them on their way to creating quality captures. He gives many tips how to overcome some of the most commonly found issues and pitfalls that long exposures can include. If there was any disappointment in what I received, it would be the duplication of the "bonus" material (except for the 'cheat sheet') from the class I had purchased the day before. I might add that "Photoshop and Lightroom for Landscape Photographers" is a great companion to this class and is also worthy of purchase. The second disappointment, at least for me, was Matt's not including long exposures that involve capturing the night sky... stars, Milky Way, Moon, etc. THAT would be a perfect opportunity for CreativeLive to jump in and put a class together. I would be willing to bet that it would be HUGELY popular. Just a thought! Again, a big 'thank you' to Matt for another solid presentation. I'll be tuning in to his next presentation.

D Kelly
 

Excellent class! Great for beginners who want to learn LE photography. I started experimenting with LE last Fall and this course totally reinforced everything I learned. I loved the "hands on" demonstrations in the field and how each frame he shot was explained. His excellent explanations of how to use the filters was very good. An easy going instructor who made what is often a confusing subject very easy to grasp.

Karen Witter
 

I have loved all of the classes I've taken from Matt, and this class was no exception. Matt explains everything so clearly and then beautifully illustrates what he means. I learned a ton from this class. I love how practical he is, as well as his engaging manner of teaching. I highly recommend this class if you're interested in taking pictures where you want to convey motion which, as he explains, is how our eyes really see.

Student Work

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