Layers, layers and more layers

How about a little more info on the daily photo. A lot of people like to see more on the post-processing, so here are the steps I did on this one (can be seen in the layer photo on the right – going from bottom to the top):

• I loaded the 4 original shots together with the tonemapped image into separate layers
• corrected the blurring of the clouds, by using the sky from the 0EV photo
• corrected different problems in the darkest areas from the +2EV photo
• corrected the white poster in the middle from the -4EV photo
• removed noise, but not on the building (so it remains sharp)
• darkened the poster in the middle a little more
• used topaz adjust (photo pop) on the boats and the buildings
• desaturated yellows on the trees
• used Color Effects Tonal Contrast on the boats and the trees to give more detail
• added contrast to the whole image
• used unsharp mask to sharpen it
• that’s all :)

Sometimes I do less, sometimes I do more. It really depends on the photo.

Boats and the City

There was such a lovely sunset this Friday. I went to the Strkovec lake in Bratislava as it’s not really far from my flat. This great clouds first gave me great photos and then a nice walk in the rain, as I was returning home :). But as it was a warm summer day, I didn’t mind at all :)

HDR from 4 shots (-4 to +2), taken with Canon 450D with Sigma 10-20mm lens, from a tripod.