Candles. Us girls love them!
I had a great assignment this week, photographing a wonderful assortment of gorgeous all natural beeswax candles. I was working with my set stylist who has absolutely every conceivable ornament and table decoration. We designed the most beautiful and romantic settings for these candles! However looking at the shots back on the computer, despite all our fabulous table fashions, they were missing something. Can you guess?
Yep, while the candles and their display looked pretty awesome (if I do say so myself), those little sparkly stars were missing. You know, those spiky points of light that make a candle lit scene intensely appealing…
Now in the old days, I’d have shot the entire shoot (!) with a crosshatch filter, which diffracts the light and makes those pretty stars. But the extra glass of the filter on the digital lens I was using created ugly hotspots and flare like blotches on the images. A problem quite often with digital lenses and old-school filters. All was not lost though. Brushes to the rescue!
A few creative clicks took care of everything. See for yourself.
My method for using these brushes is to create a new layer, using the eye dropper too, I select the colour of the glow around the candle to make this the brush colour. then I brush on the new layer, and set its blending mode to screen. Viola!
You can get star effect brushes here or just Google star brushes for Photoshop.
You can get the sparkly candles here!
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