My GPS Camera Phone

While I’ve had some success in the past with taking camera phone photos of the moon, it doesn’t mean I really knew what I was doing. Hard to believe, I know. This time around, however, I think I can say with a slight bit of conviction that the best time to shoot the moon is dusk on a semi-clear evening while the sky is still blue. Having a polarizing filter, as seen in Dan’s example, would eliminate the glow around the moon, but we’re talking about a camera phone here. Instead of agonizing over the inability to get a “perfect” photo, work with what you have and be positive about the potential results.

It goes without saying that a little bit of Photoshop surgery is still going to be required to remove the dreaded camera phone jpeg artifacts that will likely arise from this low-light photo. A little application of the “Reduce Noise” filter and the image is less pixellated, resulting in a smoother blue sky.

I think that the biggest point to remember is to not move. It’s a no-brainer, but seriously, don’t move. If you have to freehand the shot, exhale before the snap and relax. If at all possible, brace yourself against something solid to reduce body movement. In a best case, try to use something as a camera mount, like a wall, fence, car, newspaper stand or anything else. Motion is not the enemy, but it certainly doesn’t help us in this scenario.

Just remember to keep trying and to keep a positive attitude on your results. There’s no film to develop, so delete the bad photos and try again! Before you realize it, you will have captured your subject. Happy shooting!

Yesterday, I posted a shot of the moon rising into a deep blue evening sky. It was reminiscent of some NASA photos I’ve seen where the blue sky turns to interstellar black. Now I’m here to tell you that what I posted was only part of the story – in other words, it really wasn’t a good photo at all. However, the magic of Photoshop allows you to make something out of nothing.

The source image was a whole lot more than a sky and moon. In fact, it was a parking lot (with a sky and moon):

Though I took the photo because I thought the sky was nice, the rest of it could stand to be eliminated. So that’s what I did. I selected a crop area that cut out everything that wasn’t sky, while still giving a decent placement to the moon:

The problem we have now is the noise generated by a low-quality, 2 mega-pixel camera phone. The file is saved as a JPG with high compression (to save space, I presume), which affects the overall quality of the photo. High compression produces poor color gradients and a pixellated look, so we need to eliminate this with a photo editing tool. Enter Photoshop magic.

As I posted recently, there’s a simple filter to smooth out gradients and reduce noise. This filter is appropriately named “Reduce Noise…” and can be found in the “Filter” menu under “Noise.” For this particular noise reduction, the settings I used were as follows:

• Strength: 10
• Preserve details: 0%
• Reduce color noise: 100%
• Sharpen details: 0%
• Remove JPEG artifact: checked

By using extreme settings, the color should smooth out nicely. You wouldn’t normally do this, but there’s no detail to preserve and we want the best smoothing possible before adjusting the levels. NOTE: Before applying the reduce noise filter, duplicate the background layer and switch off the new duplicate layer. You’ll need it later. Here’s the image with noise reduction applied:

Once the noise is worked out, we’ll add an adjustment layer to control the levels by going to “Layer->New adjustment layer->Levels…” Be sure that this layer is at the top. Adjust the settings to your liking. In my case, the blue becomes much more blue and the dark areas become almost black. Almost there:

Now wait, there was a moon in this image. What good is a noise reduction filter if it is going to blur everything out? Good question.

Remember that duplicate layer? Turn it on then outline the moon using the polygonal lasso or whatever you’re comfortable using. You will notice that the noise reduction didn’t apply to this layer because it wasn’t selected at the time, which means the moon is still visible. Once outlined, right-click (CMD-click in OS X) on the selection and the choose “Layer via copy.” Now the moon is resting on its own layer, hopefully above the noise reduced layer. You will know this immediately because the moon will suddenly be visible. Add a watermark and you’ve got a finished product:

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Here’s a creepy moon photo from November 2007. Have a safe and happy Halloween.

Hello WW readers! My current Wordless Wednesday is here. I accidentally registered with last week’s image (this post)! Thanks for visiting!

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