Here is another cool trick you can use to fix the digital noise you get on lightning photos using digital cameras, there are great plugins out there that do this, but for those of you that don't have the plugins, this will do the same job.

You may have read read about blurring Red and Blue color channels, this works great, but can also blur your picture in some cases or cause your bolt to turn green since the only channels your blurring are the Red and Blue cause these are the problem color channels for digital imaging.

So now that your have your digital still, note: if you have a DV still, and have not read my De-Interlace tip, go there first so you can have a nice still to work with.

Since I use Photoshop, I will explain how to work from with in it and you might be able to do it similar in your program.

Step 1: Open your digital still and goto Image/Mode menu and change it to Lab Color.

Step 2: Look in your Channels pallette in bottom left of photoshop and select A Channel and then goto Filter/Noise menu and select Dust & Scratches and then put Threshhold to 0 and adjust the radius until you see the pixeley edging of your bolt smooth out, dont do it to much, just do it till its not so choppy, 3 or 4 is pretty good usually, then click OK.

Step 3: Select the B Channel and do the same process as in step 2.

Step 4: Select the Lab channel to show all channels and the from Image /Mode menu change it back to RGB.

This will cleanup the red and blue choppy look to bolt edges that you will sometimes get, plus cleanup the overall digital noise that you get in digital photos.

If you are a photoshop user and want a quick action made up for it, email me and I would be happy to share it with you, it will give you the option to press 1 button and the picture will be fixed up, very nifty thing photoshop has.