Step 4: Let’s Turn Out The Lights What if I wanted a night shot instead of a midday look? Part of the nik Color Efex Pro package is a family of Midnight filters that lets you add varying amounts of blur, contrast, brightness, and color to mimic moonlight. I selected the Midnight filter (Filter>nik Color Efex Pro 2.0: Stylizing Filters>Midnight) and experimented with different settings to give the landscape a “day for night” (La Nuit Américaine) look. I didn’t have any sharp moon photos so I borrowed a digital file from my friend and Pulitzer prize-winning photojournalist Barry Staver (www.barrystaver.com) who gave me permission to use it for this project. You can shoot your own full moon with your longest lens and your camera mounted on a tripod. Using Photoshop’s Elliptical selection tool I selected the moon, copied (Edit>Copy) it to the Clipboard, then pasted (Edit>Paste) it into the farm file thus adding the moon as a separate layer. After you select “Show Bounding Box” in the Options bar, clicking the Move (Arrow) tool shows manipulation handles on the moon layer. To resize it and maintain proportionality, hold the Shift Key and drag one of the layer’s corners and the moon where you want it to be. Step 5: Add Some Digital Water I wanted the final image to include water and selected Flaming Pear’s (www.flamingpear.com) Flood plug-in to produce a lake effect. The interface has controls that let you change the kind of water and its reflection, but the most important tool is Horizon to set the water’s level. Try different levels to see what works best with your image. I brought the water up to the farm building to give it a “on the lake” look. Next, play with the sliders or Click on Flood’s Dice icon to be presented with a variety of choices. Keep clicking until you find something you like. Finally, I used Photoshop’s Burn tool to further darken the sky and give the image a moonrise look. Sure this isn’t the way the farm actually looked but it’s the way I would prefer to remember it and it sure beats the heck out of a six-lane blacktop. Downloads Available For free trial downloads of the popular plug-ins mentioned in this article, please visit our website at: http://www.photographic.com/downloads/ Joe Farace is Colorado-based photographer/writer, and a regular contributor to Photographic. Visit him at: www.joefarace.com or joefaraceshootscars.com