The rumor is Britney Spears took one of these from the Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas to her attorney's office in Los Angeles to get the annulment paperwork going! :)

Anyway, if you can look past the armorment for a moment, ya gotta admit these flying machines are pretty amazing -- as are the pilots who fly them.

Great photo by Sungoldens.

Zoom!
~Danny~

Here are a couple created with the Chrome action available HERE (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=64025#post64025)

In this first one, the action was applied without any setting changes. All layers were turned on to get the color effect.

~Danny~

This is a twist on the previous one...

In this one:
* The planes were isolated on their own layer after running the action (no color this time). Blend mode: Vivid Light.
* Inserted a gradient layer below the planes layer
* To give the planes' edges a little oomph, I applied the Find Edges filter to a copy of the original image (copied to the top of the layer stack), desaturated and applied Image > Adjustments > Levels to it to eliminate as much midtone noise as possible. When I changed the layer blend mode from Normal to Darken, the dark, defining lines remained and the white was suppressed.

Another variation from this action, this time with color off.

Hi Danny:
You kind of looked like the Maytag Man out here, so I thought I would come and stand with you. I really liked the first attempt you did kind of like an old WWII movie effect with lights coming up from below.
Anyway here is my try called "F16's Morning Flight":
1. Placed a layer above the origina and used a gradiant called "Peach Sky"
2. Changed mode to color burn and opacity to 40%
3. Filter>Render>Lighting Effects, default spotlight settings, placed the light so it was coming in from the left.
4. Texturize with canvas at 60% scale 2% refief and light bottom left.
Thanks
Bob

Bob:

Thanks for jumping in and giving this thread a little action. The morning sky treatment is nicely done. Really appreciate the "how to" steps, too.

My wife (and I) got a chuckle out of the Maytag Man reference, especially since I don't have a lick of appliance repair-type skills and we both remember those commercials.

~Danny~