display fireworks

[John Cuevas]

The fireworks being over a night sky, should make it pretty doable.

If these displays were shot at different locations and buildings are present, trees…the first step would be to mask that out. Next you might want to add a levels or curves effect to crush the blacks and brighten everything else.

Then you have a few differnt ways you can approach this. You could lay the tracks on top of each other and use the “add” transfer mode. This would give a quick an easy way to do it, but the fireworks will add together.

Another approach would be to add a “Luma Key” effect, use the “Key Out Darker” key type. And just adjust the threshold up to say 20…That should get rid of your blacks and give you a key on the fireworks. Adjust edge feather to taste. You could also try the key type “key out similiar” and adjust the tolerance, that also may work.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor

[Michael Szalapski]

An alternative to luma key is the free plugin called Unmult. It might suit you better.

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[Jim Cooper]

Thanks Johny and Michael, I am having great success with these ideas!