And we came again to another Monday, so it’s time for another before/after processing post. And since I posted more fireworks shots in the last weeks, we take a look at one of those :)

But before we start, let me remind you, that you can download a free eBook on capturing firework photos from here.

So lets start with the photo. As it’s a fireworks shot, it was created from a single exposure. Here you can see the final edit and the original RAW photo.

I first started in Lightroom, where I removed the chromatic abberations, noise and brightened the shadows a little and darkened the highlights. From there I exported the photo as 16-bit tiff and opened in Oloneo Photoengine. There using the strength slider, I opened the shadows even more, and added contrast. Here you can see the Lightroom and Oloneo results (please note that the Oloneo result already has the lens corrections applied in Photoshop on it).

As always I continued in Photoshop. I loaded the Oloneo Photoengine result there, did a perspective crop and did the following edits (layers numbered from bottom up)
1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2. Color balance, as the photo was too purple.
3. Color effex Pro contrast filter to get more detail from the photo.
4. A very strong noise reduction, applied to the corner areas, as brightening the shadow areas resulted in too much noise.
5. Added more structure using the high pass filter, but just to the fireworks and the buildings.
6. Added more overall contrast.
7. Even more contrast, but just to the fireworks.
8. Warmed up parts of the photo.

And that’s all I did with this image. To find out more on how I edit, check out the guides and before after categories on this blog, or check out my video tutorial series here:

Durnstein is a really lovely city. It’s like made for tourists (and photographers). Almost no cars in the city, a lot of restaurants, beautiful church and a castle ruin with a really crazy view :) Really great for a day trip. I visited it few times already, and I hope I go again, as I still have few photos I want to take there. Maybe a panorama from the the castle could look great :)

This is a manual blend from 3 exposures, done in Photoshop. I also used a 10 stop ND filter while I was taking this photo.

The lighting on this bridge is just crazy. Very strong neon light from the sides and even stronger white light under it. Just crazy. Of course the 6 exposures I took were not enough to get the whole dynamic range, especially so late at night (this was taken after around midnight :)). But by using a combination of different processing techniques I got the most of it.

This photo is a HDR from 4 exposures created in Oloneo Photoengine (haven’t used the brightest two, as they made the result too bright) and then blended with the original exposures in Photoshop.

How about another shot from the Dubai Marina. Still have a lot unprocessed one (not that I will edit all of them anyway :)). This one is from the only sunrise I managed to get up, and I don’t really think I missed much during all the others. There was just very little color everywhere. So even in the editing I didn’t add so much color into the photo. It would just look to fake to me. Somehow each time I finish an edit, I look at the photo, and decide if it looks the way I remembered the scene. If it doesn’t, I just know I will not like it, even if the result is decent :)

This is a manual blend from 4 exposures. Most of the work was to brighten the foreground, while still having no movement on the boat.

I thought it was time again to update the wallpaper page that is on this blog. I thought I made it again all photos from one city (Budapest in this case), but I just could not find a photo that would work good as a dual screen wallpaper. So in the end, I ended with three new wallpapers from Budapest and one huge one from Prague :)

All wallpapers as always shared under the CC license. As all my photos, feel free to share them and use for any non-commercial use.