For this weeks process post, I have for you something a little different. In this one I will show you how to create this blurred effect in Photoshop. It quite simple, and it can create a really interesting result.

So to get a result like this:

I started with this photo as the base. It’s one of my older HDR, and this effect also looks best on scenes with trees.

So the first thing I did was to duplicate the layer. On this new layer I used the Motion blur (Filter -> Blur -> Motion blur) and played around with the values until I got the look I wanted.

Next I added a mask to the blurred layer, and using a black soft brush at 100% I brushed over the parts where I wanted the original photo to show through. Then I changed the opacity to 30% and softened the transition.

That actually makes the whole effect. But I also suggest running a filter like Color Efex Pro contrast, as the blurred version will be lacking in the contrast area.

And that’s it. If you give it a try, and create an interesting result, feel free to share your results in the comments :)

1 000 000 views

And I just got another milestone for one of my accounts. This time it’s the first 1 000 000 vies on my Flickr portfolio under http://www.flickr.com/photos/theodevil/. I actually started publishing my photos there, and it’s the oldest of all my photo accounts :)

The colorful Eiffel tower

I never can edit photo when my head hurts. And as I just got a cold, my head hurts like crazy. So for today, I only have a very quick edit of a night photo from Paris. And I’m going to bet to get some sleep :)

This is a HDR created in Oloneo Photoengine and finished in Photoshop.

Photomatix Pro 5 – Review

My review of Photomatix pro is quite short, but as I described a lot of it in my HDR tutorial, you can find much more there. But anyway, you can find my review of Photomatix Pro 5 here.

Blown away

You very often read in headlines, that a photo will blow you away. I personally try to avoid that types of descriptions in my photos, as they never mean anything. But here it is different. While I was taking this, the strong wind almost blown me away :) It of course took away a lot of sharpness from the photo, but I think its still manageable.

This is a single exposure edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.

10k and 100k

Recently I have been more active on my 500px account and today I reached my first milestone there. Or better said two of them. Today I got 10 000 affection (thats a metric that combines all likes and favorites there) and secondly I reached my first 100 000 views there. Many thanks to all of you who visit and vote for my photos there :)

Soft color of the cold evening

Not really sure why I left a little softer colors in this one. I even left a little yellow color cast here. Maybe because while I was editing I was listening to great music (Beatles, Queen, Abba, New order and similar :)) that I got in a particular mood. Still, I like the result very much, and I hope you will too.

This is of course the Apollo bridge in Bratislava, and one of my favorite spots there. This is a HDR from 5 exposures created in Oloneo Photoengine and then blended with two of the original exposures in Photoshop.

As every photographer, I use many memory cards. And I need to relay on them, so they don’t loose any of the files. File corruption is not something you want to encounter after a photo-shoot.

So in my opinion a good memory card, is the one you can’t say nothing about. It should just work, without you having to think about it. I’ve been using Kingston cards for a few years now (some of my cards are few years old). The thing I can say about them, is that they work. I never had any problems with them.

I don’t even use the fastest cards. I have no need for that. As a landscape photographer, I almost never do a quick series of shot in a row. They are also quite cheaper than the fastest ones on market and so I can have more of them. Most of my cards are also of the slower type, the 266x, the only one I have of 600x I bought for when I shoot at events, but I never noticed any difference either. Really I don’t care what the transfer rate is. The buffer of the camera can handle a 9 bracket exposure, and until you set for another one, it safely saved to the card.

Overall I’m very satisfied with my Kingston CF cards. All of them have been formatted hundreds of times, and also filled to maximum. And with the price being 30-50% of a comparable Sandisk card, it’s hard to suggest a different one.

View all my other reviews here.