The CT-133 Silver star 518 flies again.

 While visiting Leduc, where my son lives, I came across a jet on display at a local park.  Always enthralled by such aviation displays, I photographed it from a variety of angles using different lenses and focal lengths.  Later on I processed the images using Photoshop and decided to create the illusion of flight.

The bottom left image shows the actual placement of the jet.  It took me about an hour of careful work using the eraser tool to separate the aircraft from its background.  I do this using a small eraser tool with soft edges; the shift key allows me to make straight runs to ensure clean cuts.  It is precision work.  Afterwards, using the selection tools, I removed the undesired elements of the shot.  The result was the second image in the bottom panel.

I then needed to find a burner flame for the tail emissions and did an image search on Google.  I found one big enough and in the right orientation to qualify and pasted the image onto my work.  More selection using feathering to soften the edges and I had what I wanted; it was moved and orientated to make a convincing exhaust (third panel).  

Lastly I had to tweek the various aspects of the scene.  This meant cleaning up any edges that weren't clean and fixing up the somewhat awkward-looking tail emission.  To do this I used a strongly feathered selection tool and a smudge tool to create a more natural looking flame.  Using the gradient tool I selected two shades of blue to create a realistic sky.  After flatening everything I ended up with an image that gave the Silver star renewed life for the first time in many years.

If you want to read more about this aircraft, built in Canada, go to this website.

Thanks for reading.   www.ericspix.com