As every Monday, I have for you a new process post today. This time I chosen to show you this photo from Prague. This is taken from one of my favourite spots there (you can see my list of spots here).

So let’s first look at the finished and the original 0EV exposure.

Finished photo

Original photo

There was not to much there regarding the dynamic range, but still a lot of things to tweak. For some reason, I don’t remember, I took 7 exposures here. In retrospect, I would probably be OK with three, but since I already had all, I used them.

I started with tweaks in Lightroom, where I corrected the white balance and lens distortions.

All exposures

Lightroom edit

From there I loaded all the exposures into Oloneo Photoengine, and just by changing the strength and contrast. From there I continued into Photoshop (layers numbered from bottom up):

1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2. 0EV exposure, set to 20% opacity, to recover a little of the contrast lost in the merge
3. 0EV exposure once more, to remove ghosting
4. -2EV exposure to darken few bright areas
5. desaturated a little the strong yellow lights
6. Color Efex pro contrast to add more local contrast to the photo.
7. Retouched out the light streak I caught in the bottom left
8+9. Added glow to the photo
10. Little more contrast to the whole photo
11. Color efex detail extractor to add more details to the sky and the trees in the foreground
12. Color balance to make the photo a little warmer
13. A little more contrast
14. Brightened the photo a little
15. TK actions Vibrance mask to add more color to less saturated areas of the photo.

Oloneo merge

Photoshop editing

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:

To bad the sky was not blue when I took this photo. That would create such a better contrast between the Matterhorn and the background. But I still really liked this photo, so I decided to edit it anyway :) This was taken right before the sunset, as the sun coloured the clouds as they passed across Matterhorn.

This is a single image, edited in Lightroom and Photoshop. It was taken from the middle of Zermatt with a long lens.

I was going through my photos from the Switzerland trip, and I noticed that I haven’t yet posted any photos form the day I spend in Lucerne. So for today I chosen one from there. The thing I really liked there, was this opening in the water power plant, which created really strong waves in the water. So I thought of using the ND filter, and get these nice soft waves in the shot. And it worked out really well :)

This is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine. I actually edited them twice, to get different brightness in them, and then blended them in Photoshop.

When one blends images, one thing that one needs to do over and over again, is to load different exposures into Photoshop layers. Depending on what program you use, this can be done in many ways, and here I will show you 4 of them.

1.Copy & Paste

Probably the worst way to do this, is just to load all photos into photoshop, and then one by one select the photo (Ctrl+A), copy the photo (Ctrl+C) and then paste into a single file (Ctrl+V). Of course you can also open the brackets next to each other, and drag and drop. Here I would suggest holding Shift while dragging, as that will center the photo in the new file automatically.

Drag & Drop in Photoshop

Loading from Lightroom

2. From Lightroom

It’s already much simpler in Lightroom. Here you can either select the files in the library view, or in the bottom photo list, and just right click on any of the photo and choose Open in Layers into Photoshop. This will export all selected files and open them right away in one in Photoshop.

3. From Bridge

This is similar in Bridge. Here you can also just choose any files you want, and by selecting Tools/Photoshop/Load files into Photoshop layers all the images will be loaded into one file. This is my favorite way of doing this, as I often include also the HDR tonemapped image, which I don’t import into Lightroom at all.

Loading from Bridge

Using Photoshop script

4. Directly from Photoshop

But what to do when you don’t have Lightroom, and cant acces Bridge? There is a way to load files into layers also directly from Photoshop. To do this, you have to go under File/Scripts/Load files into Stack. In the new window that opens, you have to choose Brows and choose which files you want to include. Once this is confimed, all selected files will be loaded into layers of a single file.

If you took the images hand-held, you can also check the option for Photoshop to try and align the exposures.

Free DxO Optics Pro 8

I came across another free software offer, this time it the DxO Optics Pro 8. And to get it, you just have to go to this page and enter your email address. So what are you waiting for? :)

Cloudy skies

I don’t really like photos with just white skies that much, but sometimes it can’t be helped. What I tend to do in those cases is just try to include as much of the foreground as I can, and as little as possible of the sky. Same here.

This is a HDR from 5 exposures, crated in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop. This photo was taken at the Schwarzsee uner Matterhorn.