Editing Firework Photographs

Let's discuss how to edit photographs of fireworks when there is smoke shown due to the light from the fireworks. The smoke may keep you from realizing you took a great photograph. I am using the latest version (3.4.5) of Apple Aperture, my choice for photograph editing and cataloging. Let's get started.

Kingston, TN - July 13, 2013

The first photo is the untouched raw. The smoke from the fireworks doesn't look too bad in this photo but you can definitely see it and it detracts from the photo.

Focal Length - 40mm
Exposure - 5 seconds
ISO - 100
f/13

Untouched RAW photo straight out of the camera

When dealing with RAW photographs, I have a routine I run on every photograph. It is just my bare minimum editing technique. For this photo, I used the "Auto Enhance" button and white balanced - a quick routine, as I don't like to touch my photos very much. You can now really see the smoke stand out in the photo.

After auto enhance

To remove the smoke, I then clicked on the "Black Point" button in the curves section. It is the dropper on the left. Notice the Loupe view and where I clicked on the smoke. This will kill the reddish smoke. I will lose some detail, but that is the sacrifice I have to make.

Using curves to "erase" the firework smoke

The final result with the only other modification being a 5x7 (landscape) crop.