There are few natural phenomena as captivating as the northern lights. But you need to be in the right place at the right time if you hope to snap a memorable of them. Unless you’re marginally comfortable with Photoshop, and don’t have any moral conflicts about just faking them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgJvMIei9_s
If you’re a Photoshop novice, you’re going to get lost following this tutorial pretty quickly. But if you’ve been pushing pixels for a few years, Phlearn’s tutorial is relatively straightforward. You’ll just need to modify a paint brush so the results are a little more random, and then use a vertical motion blur to recreate those soft skyward streaks.
It may take a few tries to get it just right and perfectly composited back into your original photo, but the results are so convincing you’ll be rolling in likes and accolades once you post it to Facebook.
[YouTube via PetaPixel]
