Welcome to the morning after the night before when you shot all of those photographs of fireworks. If you are like me, you have at least a hundred or more waiting for you to do all of the post production work on them. This is not a mountain to climb. it’s a fun little molehill to step over.
The power of AutoSync
AutoSync is Lightoom’s RAW batch processor. When it’s on, every change made to the most selected photo showing in the content area of the Develop module is applied to all of the selected photos. While there are times that this could pose a big problem, custom cropping for example, it works very well when there are similar photos that want to get to good starting place for subtle refinements. AutoSync is perfect for fireworks.
Turning AutoSync On
When only one photo is selected in the Develop module, the only choice for synchronizing settings is Previous. Click it will apply the last group of setting to the currently selected photo. When more than one photo is selected, the most selected version (it’s the one with the brighter highlight and is displayed in the content area) Previous changes to Sync. Clicking Sync brings up a dialog box of all available settings, each with its own checkbox. This allows synchronizing only the setting chosen to the rest of the selected photographs. Click the switch to the left of Sync and the button’s name changes to AutoSync. Any change made to the most selected photo is applied to the rest of the selection with no further fuss. Remember that any change made in the Develop module is always undo-able at anytime in the future. No change is permanent.
Settings for enhancing fireworks photos
Here is a list of the settings I use for my fireworks photographs in order by panel. I’ve provided an explanation where the setting I choose might be confusing.
Basic panel – White Balance
Fireworks tend to create warm and vibrant colors. I choose Daylight for the white balance. This makes the oranges and yellows (the fire part of fireworks) show up nicely. Tungsten or Incandescent white balance cancels them out by returning those colors to white.
Basic panel – Whites & Blacks
The Whites and Blacks sliders set the brightest highlight and darkest shadow area in the photo. I love these for cleaning up the sky. Blacks is particularly good at this. Use the tools by first holding down the Option (WIN: Alt) key. Click the Whites slider. The preview goes black except for maybe really small sparkles. This is good. Leave the Whites alone. If there is a huge amount of white showing, the photo is over exposed. Lower the Exposure slider then check Whites again. TIP: Holding down Option (WIN: Alt) works with Exposure too.
Still holding down the Option (WIN: Alt) click the Blacks slider at its default setting of 0. You’ll probably see a white screen with very few colors in the sky like the photo on the left. Move the Blacks control to the left and the sky becomes progressively more black. The middle photo shows Blacks at -20. By -28 only a tiny bit of color remains outside of the burst itself. If you have to move the slider much more to the left than -35 or so, once again, the photo is over exposed.
Basic panel – Presence
My favorite settings for fireworks are Clarity, Vibrance and Saturation–the Presence sliders.
- Clarity +40
- Vibrance +40
- Saturation +30
Clarity brings out the fine detail. Vibrance works on the middle, complimentary colors. Saturation hits them all, especially the primaries: red, green and blue.
Detail panel – Sharpening
Set this at +100 and move on.
Lens Corrections panel – Chromatic Aberration & Lens Profile Corrections
Check both boxes. Done. In rare instances, the Profile will display a different brand lens than the one you have. Click the dropdown menu and choose your lens’ manufacturer. All will be well.
Done!
With AutoSync on, all of the work you just did has propagated to every selected photo. If you want to amp up individual colors; there a post I wrote for that here.
All that’s left is to choose your favorite to share with family, friends, and Facebook followers. You can easily composite your fireworks together to make an closing extravaganza of your own. I’ll post a tutorial soon.
Any trick to easily (selectively) get rid of smoke trails (left behind by previously exploded fireworks)? I find they muddy otherwise excellent images and detract from what should be the true focus.
Thanks for the question Drew. One thing to try is to open the image in Photoshop. Click the lock on the Background layer to make it Layer 0. Make a new layer, drag it under Layer 0 (the one with your fireworks and smoke.) Next use the Eyedropper tool with the sample size set to 5 by 5 average in the options bar and sample the sky behind the fireworks. If it is black, that’s really good. Fill the new layer with that color. Select Layer 0 then click the Add New Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the… Read more »
Any trick to easily (selectively) get rid of smoke trails (left behind by previously exploded fireworks)? I find they muddy otherwise excellent images and detract from what should be the true focus.
Thanks for the question Drew. One thing to try is to open the image in Photoshop. Click the lock on the Background layer to make it Layer 0. Make a new layer, drag it under Layer 0 (the one with your fireworks and smoke.) Next use the Eyedropper tool with the sample size set to 5 by 5 average in the options bar and sample the sky behind the fireworks. If it is black, that’s really good. Fill the new layer with that color. Select Layer 0 then click the Add New Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the… Read more »
I just found this when I was looking for instruction on how to develop fireworks pictures. I notice this is a smidge dated. Do you still recommend these settings or what if anything have you changed. Thanks. Hey, last question. What criteria do you use when separating pics you keep versus those you don’t.