Prepar1ng for take-off

Make sure that both you and your camera are ready to follow the fast-moving action

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STEP BY STEP

Enhance an aerial action shot

Boost colours

Sponge tool
Next we'll subtly increase the saturation of the purple smoke trails (but not the red or green. as they're saturated enough). Select the Sponge tool . set Mode to Saturate and Flow 15. and brush over the purple smoke to boost its colour. ..

11

Open the masterclass_start.dng in Adobe Camera Raw. The image is a little underexposed. so increase Exposure by a stop to +1. Take boost the contrast and colours. increase Contrast to +70 and set Saturation to +10.

15'1 Zoom into the image and you'll see that there's

Reduce the noise

~ some luminance noise in the sky. To reduce this.

click the Detail tab to access the Noise Reduction sliders. and set the Luminance slid er to 50. This slider will also soften detail in your subjects . so you want to keep it to the minimum amount you can get away with .

Now we're going to bring out the detail in the . . planes. To do this duplicate the 'Background' layer and label the new layer 'Planes'. Press Ctri+L to bring up Levels and set the Midtones slider to 1.17 and the Highlights slider to 224. Add a mask to hide the effect by going to Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All.

Boost the contrast

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Next select the Crop tool. click and hold on the . . . tool icon to open a menu of options and select the 2:3 aspect ratio. Draw out a crop to remove some of the empty sky and make the planes more prominent in the frame; make sure you leave some space for the left-hand plane to 'fly into'. Hit Enter to apply the crop. and click Open Image to bring the image into Elements.

Crop in

Make a selection
~ Select each of the planes using the Quick

. . . Selection tool. Set the brush size to 10-15 pixels . and click and drag over each plane to paint a selection marquee. The selection will snap to contrasting edges. but if you select parts of the sky or smoke by mistake press Alt to switch to 'Subtract from Selection ' mode. and paint over those areas to deselect them .

Super Tip!
As a rule of thumb, when you 're shooting handheld you want to use a shutter speed equivalent to at least the effective focal length of your lens to avoid camera shake. For example, with a 200mm lens you 'd need a minimum speed of 1/200 sec, but if the lens is mounted on a crop-sensor camera, then you need to multiply this by 1.6x to give you an EFL of 320mm, and thus a speed of 1/320 sec. However, while this is usually enough to counteract camera shake, fast-moving subjects such as planes may still look blurred, so you 'll have to increase your shutter speed further still , to around 1/1000sec.

Remove the Mask

When all the planes are selected . target the mask by clicking its thumbnail , then go to Edit> Fill Selection . Choose White from the Use menu and click OK to fill the outlines of the planes with white and reveal the contrast boost. Press Ctri+D to Deselect the selection. then tidy up the edges of the planes by painting on the mask with black and white brushes.

Adjust the levels

w-1 To boost the contrast in the image add a Levels 511 adjustment layer. and move it between the
'Background' and 'Plane' layers in the Layers panel. Set the Shadows slider to 30. the Midtones slider to 0.88 and the Highlights sliderto 238.

Clone the smoke

~ Next we'll tidy up the red smoke at the

~ bottom-right of the image. Select the Clone

Stamp tool. and Alt-click on the edge of the smoke trail about half-way up, where the smoke looks more even . to sample those pixels. Click and drag to clone these pixels over the messy area. taking care to align the edges of the smoke.

To finish off we'll add a vignette to darken the . . . light corners of the image and frame the planes. Select the ' Background ' layer and go to Filter> Correct Camera Distortion. Set the Vignette Amount slid er to -20 and the Midpoint slider, which controls the size of the effect, to +40. Click OK to apply the effect.

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Add a Vignette

3 tips for top gun action shots!

How to capture great images of planes, both in the sky and on the ground

1. Action on the ground

Take-offs and landings offer plenty of shooting opportunities. Plane's wheels can look good when they hit the runway, accompanied by a cloud of smoke.

2. Display shots
At key moments in an aerial display, be sure to zoom out so there's enough space at the corners and edges of the frame for the planes to fit into.

3. Fast-moving targets
Jet aircraft can be hard to photograph, as they fly by pretty quickly! Try to anticipate the space a plane is going to move into, so you can keep ahead of the action .